Robytes
by Jeff and Jenn Eckert
Oil Sucker Prototype
The Seaswarm bot team autonomously cleans up oil spills.
A few weeks ago, the folks at MIT’s Senseable City Lab
( senseable.mit.edu) tested a prototype robotic oil skimmer
dubbed Seaswarm in the Charles River. You might not think
of the Charles as a hotbed of oil spills, but it happens now
and then. In fact, the Cambridge-based Mirant Kendall
power plant has reported five separate oil-related incidents
since 1999 and has been cited for 35 effluent violations
since 2006. We’re not talking about Gulf of Mexico-scale
spills, but it’s got to be pretty annoying to the locals. In any
event, Seaswarm offers a potential solution for any level of
environmental mishap. The concept is based on releasing a
swarm of skimmers that can work autonomously and
continuously for weeks. In operation, each bot employs a
rolling conveyor belt of thin nanowire mesh to absorb the
oil, squeezes the oil into a collection chamber of some sort,
and “digests” it on site. The swarm communicates and
coordinates their operations via GPS and WiFi, thereby
establishing an organized system. The exact digestion
process is unclear at this point, and the prototype doesn’t
appear to include that capability. However, related literature
mentions compressing the belt to remove the oil and
subsequently burning it, so perhaps that’s the next
evolutionary step. In any event, Seaswarm measures 16 x 7
ft ( 4. 9 x 2.1 m), uses two square meters of solar panels for
propulsion, and draws only 100W of current. According to
MIT, 5,000 of the relatively inexpensive Seaswarms working
for a month would be capable of cleaning up the
Deepwater Horizon spill. Prototype updates are in the
works, so stay tuned.
Bot Sets Walking Record
It’s official. The Ranger robot — developed at Cornell
University ( www.cornell.edu) — has bumped Boston
Dynamics’ BigDog from the top spot for nonstop walking
by an untethered, legged robot. BigDog previously set the
record with 12.8 miles ( 20. 6 km), but Ranger took the
championship by taking 65,185 steps on an indoor track at
Ranger strolls to a
world record on an
indoor track.
Barton Hall,
covering 14. 3 miles
( 23 km) on a single
charge over a period
of a little over 10
hours, 40 minutes.
For good measure,
it used only about a
penny’s worth of
electricity per three
miles of travel.
Given that Ranger
isn’t designed to do
much else, there’s
not a lot more to
say about it. It’s
steered with a
model airplane remote control, employs six on-board
microprocessors, and travels at about 1.34 mph ( 2. 15
km/h) using a 25.9V lithium-ion battery.
Bot Trains Chopper Pilots
The first few hours of a helicopter pilot’s training are
known to be particularly intense and dangerous — more so
than with fixed-wing aircraft. This is true for a variety of
reasons, among which are the complexity of the machinery,
the environment in which they are flown, and the fact that
a student will typically learn his stuff inside a Robinson R22
(which unfortunately wasn’t designed to be a trainer).
However, the folks at the Max Planck Institute for Biological
Cybernetics
( www.kyb.mpg.de)
(
www.kuka-robotics.com/
germany/de) and
Heli Aviation
(
www.heli-aviation.de) to make
chopper training
both cheaper and
safer. The result is
Heli Trainer,
introduced at the
The Heli Trainer
helicopter flight
training robot.
8 SERVO 11.2010
