8 SERVO 10.2013
by Jeff and Jenn Eckert
Robytes
Robot Flies and Walks
Most flying bots are equipped
with some sort of landing gear —
typically wheels — so they can move
along the ground when necessary.
Unfortunately, that adds to the
structural weight, and simple wheels
aren't particularly good at navigating
over rough terrain. Never fear,
however, because the folks at EPFL's
Laboratory of Intelligent Systems
(
lis.epfl.ch) have come up with the
Deployable Air Land Exploration
Robot (DALER) which incorporates
"adaptive morphology" to repurpose
its wings for walking. These wing-legs ("whegs") are designed to
manage more complex terrains,
including semi-collapsed buildings,
caverns, and forests. This is intended
to make DALERs useful for
applications like search-and-rescue, environmental
monitoring, and other tasks in which they are able to fly,
hover, and crawl as required. According to its developers,
"The morphology of the robot is optimized for ground
speed. It can move forward at 0.2 m/s (8 in/s) and can
rotate on spot at 25°/s. The robot is capable of walking
with different gaits, it can move on different surfaces, it
can overcome high obstacles, and it can also navigate in
rough terrains." Its gait is not exactly graceful, as you can
see in a You Tube video (just search "daler robot"). Plus, in
its present form at least, you toss DALER like a Frisbee to
launch it, so it doesn't appear to be capable of becoming
airborne on its own. I'm sure they'll work that out.
DALER flies, hovers, and uses
"whegs" to move over rough
surfaces.
Hexapod Lite Debuts
Designed to handle much more challenging
obstacles is RHex, which is short for "robot
hexapod." This hopperbot was actually developed a
decade ago in a multi-university collaboration, but
the latest version — X-RHex Lite (a.k.a., XRL) — is
lighter and more agile. Recently introduced by the
University of Pennsylvania's Kod*lab, it "can execute
double jumps, flips, and — through a combination
of moves — even pull-ups. For the tallest obstacles,
the robot can launch itself vertically, hook its front
legs on the edge of the object it's trying to
surmount, then drag its body up and over." The
ultimate aim is to create a machine that can easily
flip over rubble in a rescue mission or collect
environmental data while crossing the desert.
A highly entertaining 2. 5 minute video is posted
at
kodlab.seas.upenn.edu.
The new X-RHex Lite climbs easily over many obstacles.