Robot Or Not A Robot?

I was walking though CVS today and I noticed a product called "Robot Sliders." Now, my mother has these sliders to help her move large furniture when cleaning. You simply place them under the four corners of a large chest and it easily slides across the floor. Where is the robot in that? Robot Sliders! This is totally false advertisement!

Okay, this may be a bit of an over reaction, but it seems that the word robot is increasingly misused in order to sell products and other applications. The word robot has always seemed to convey a sci-fi and advanced mechanism. And in that vain, I can understand the word's use on components that have some electrical and sensing capability. But the robot sliders didn't even have a power cord.

Let's look at what the definition of robot is. According to the Robot Institute of America in 1979, a robot is "A reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks".

Essentially this means that a machine must have a programming center (computer chip) and able to execute several tasks. The machine may also have a set of tools to complete a task. The i robot's Roomba is a great example of this.

This definition is 30 years old and a great amount of computer and electronics invention has been completed since then. The idea of a robot has further been complicated with the addition of these components in everyday things. Is a cell phone that has an alarm on it a robot? Is a car that tells your the oil tank is low? Confusing questions.

I searched the web for a modern day definition, but many definitions on the web associate robots with human likeness or actions. This association of humans and robotic ties may come from the word robot itself. The word robot is a Czech word, robota, which means compulsory labor or serf. The meaning being that robots would be our slaves.

I wonder how much we are actually slaves to robots. At least in our pocket books!

Robots Hop to Sucess

On robot.net a new type of robotic grasshopper is featured. The odd looking robot, looks very much like a large ball that deflects like a bow and arrow to propel the robot upward. This is similar to how a grasshopper jumps.

I'm a fan of hopping robot's, mainly because for my Master's Thesis I designed micro robotic grasshopper with a new type of actuator. Granted my robotic hopper only leaped a few millimeters, but I'm still intrigued by the idea of a swarm of jumping robots.

Grasshoppers jump by using their upper and lower leg muscles to pull back on their knee joint. The knee is able to deform and create potential energy. To create this mechanically, a slot and pin are used. The pin is held in place by a spring. When the muscles compress the spring, enough force is created for jumping. When the muscles release, the object is propelled forward.

A great example of how this all works is on the website How Grasshoppers Jump by Heitler out of the UK. I used this site to understand the bio-mechanics of a grasshopper, way back when I was doing my Master works. I'm glad to see it's still up and running. Below are some snap shots.

One last thought on grasshoppers. I found this great video from the NewScientist. A grasshopper robot was able to jump 27 times higher than it's own height. This is a world record. It will be awesome when it can actually land a jump!

The intent for this jumping robot is for search and rescue in a forest. While jumping robots are good for uneven terrain, another advantage is the low computing power. Over long distances, hopping robots can make small adjustments to their path with out much power loss. Traditional wheel robots need to constantly be monitoring direction and require turning for correction.

While hopping robots are a fun concept, the challenges of hopping robots are numerous. Landing and stability are intrinsic problems with this type of design. I'll be blogging more about this in the future.

Hello, World!

Welcome all to my blogging spot. I've decided to take my obsession with biologically inspired robots and share it with the world.

What is a biologically inspired mechanism or robot? Well, it is anything that moves, operates, or thinks like humans, animals, or nature. Nature has been around for many thousands of years and has gotten pretty good at a lot of things. Birds fly long distances, fish swim to avoid being eaten, and plants grow in little light. These are all examples of nature being faced with a challenge and adapting to the situation. Scientists are problem solvers too.


What is a mechanism or robot? It's any man-made device that moves, operates, or computes. A robot is defined as a "multi-programmable manipulator". This basically means any thing that can be used many time to move or change something else. Mechanisms include aircraft, underwater vehicles, a latch on a car door, or a slingshot.


Scientist can look to nature to solve or improve of the problems they face. Let's look at how an insect flies around your house. An insect can flap it's wing to fly and avoid the walls as it looks for food. The wing is light weight and needs little power to propel it. The insect's brain is very small and requires little "computing power" to control the motion of the wing. These characteristic are very advantageous for designing small unmanned air craft, or UAV. Imagine what more efficient air travel could do for commercial travel.

Using humans, animals, and nature as a foundation for man-made systems is nothing new. In the late 1400's, Leonardo Da Vinci designed many contraption using architecture of humans muscles and tendons. Secretly, he would autopsy corpses to understand how the human body worked. Many of his gliders were based on his observations of bird in flight. Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci

There is a lot of exciting research being conducted in todays labs. I hope to bring you a spattering of exciting new technologies. Many of the new technologies are finding their way into our consumer products. I hope I can be the translator for the "crazy scientific minds" to your technology inspired minds.