Real Robots

Space Robots The Sojourner is a 6-wheeled vehicle of a rocker bogie design which allows the traverse of obstacles a wheel diameter (13cm) in size. Each wheel is independently actuated and geared (2000:1). The front and rear wheels are independently steerable, providing the capability for the vehicle to turn in place. The vehicle has a top speed of 0.4m/min. It is powered by a 0.22sqm solar panel comprised of 13 strings of 18, 5.5mil GA As cells each. The normal driving power requirement for the micro rover is 10W.

Nuclear Robots the decontamination and dismantlement of nuclear weapons facilities. It has two six-degree of freedom Schilling arms mounted on a five-degree of freedom base. As the facilities used to develop our country's nuclear weapons enter their 50th year and beyond, we now have to dismantle them and safely store the waste. The radioactive fields makes this activity too hazardous for human workers so the use of robotics makes sense. The idea for this robot is that it can hold a part in one hand and use a cutting tool with the other; basically stripping apart the reactor layer by layer (something like peeling an onion). As the robot works it too will become contaminated and radioactive and ultimately need to be stored as radioactive waste.

Airborne Robots The Navy call it the "Silver Fox" and it really does use an engine from the world of R/C planes. This is no R/C plane though. It is capable of fully autonomous flight and is designed for reconnaissance, intelligence, surveillance and target acquisition by small military units. The current model carries commercially available sensors. The goal is to give the Silver Fox, which is also known as the Smart Warfighter Array of Reconfigurable Modules (SWARM), 24-hour endurance a 1,500-mile range and a maximum altitude of 10,000-feet. The idea of 100 of these things filled with explosives flying 1000 miles and then closing on an enemy target like a swarm of mad bees is truly terrifying.

Research Robots The Robotics Research Corporation of America produced this robot in 1988 for NASA to study the possibility of using robots to perform maintenance on the International Space Station. Each of the robot's arms has 7 joints and they are mounted on a torso with 3 joints, giving the robot a total of 17 degrees of freedom. As discussed on the industrial robots page, a robot only needs 6 joints in general to arbitrarily position a rigid body in space. This robot's arms are called redundant arms because they have seven joints. The extra joints enable the robot to perform many tasks in an infinite number of different ways - just like human arms. For example, he can reach around obstacles. The single serial chain (the torso) branching into two separate chains (each arm) makes this robot an excellent test bed for development of kinematic optimization algorithms.

Law Enforcement Robots It is small and has a video camera and a light. The tracks should provide excellent maneuverability on all types of terrain. A robot like this is a good choice for finding suspects hiding in vents or drainage pipes. It could also be sent into difficult situations with barricaded suspects. As with the bomb disposal robot, this surveillance robot is telecontrolled by a remote operator.

Undersea Robots The Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney developed the robot shown at left as a prototype for autonomous underwater robots that may one day explore and monitor the Great Barrier Reef. At present this robot (called Oberon) must remain tethered to a ship on the surface, but its inventors predict that within a decade it would be possible for robots to be lowered to the ocean floor and left to get on with mapping the terrain on their own. Oberon has two scanning sonars and a depth sensor as well as a color camera. It does not need any independent information, such as from global positioning system satellites, to work out where it is.

Mars Curiosity Rover The rover comes equipped "standard" with six-wheel rocker-bogie suspension and multiple camera systems, and its power supply doesn't rely on solar panels. Curiosity uses a radioisotope power generator so that it can roam longer and farther, traveling to more interesting places than previous missions. It has an expansive suite of science instruments named Sample Analysis at Mars, designed to analyze samples of material collected and delivered by the rover's arm.

What Jibo Can Do See Two hi-res cameras recognize and track faces, capture photos, and enable immersive video calling. Learn Artificial Intelligence algorithms learn your preferences to adapt and fit into your life. Hear 360° microphones and natural language processing let you talk to JIBO from anywhere in the room. Speak Hands-free reminders and messages, so you'll never forget and can always be in touch. Help Like a personal assistant, JIBO proactively helps you, to make everyday tasks simpler and easier. Relate Communicates and expresses using natural social and emotive cues so you understand each other better.

Bipedal Humanoid Robots Bipedal humanoid robot "Atlas", primarily developed by the American robotics company Boston Dynamics, is presented to the media during a news conference at the University of Hong Kong, on October 17, 2013. The 6-foot (1.83 m) tall, 330-pound (149.7 kg) robot is made of graded aluminum and titanium and costs HK$ 15 million ($1.93 million). It is capable of a variety of natural movements, including dynamic walking, calisthenics and user programmed behaviors, according to the University of Hong Kong's press release.