Mother Nature Designs The Best Robots

Earnest Cavalli

New member
Jun 19, 2008
5,352
0
0
Mother Nature Designs The Best Robots



The secret to building the perfect robotic worm seems to be wholesale design theft from the lowly nematode.

Other than the cataclysmic tremors themselves, the worst part of an earthquake is the monumental destruction left behind. Buildings collapse or fall over, which is terrible news for people who enjoy living in buildings (read: all of them). This often leads to situations where rescue crews spend weeks digging through rubble to recover survivors, or more often, corpses.

Lives could be saved if only someone could create a better way to reach trapped survivors.

Enter: Jordan Boyle, researcher at the University of Leeds in the UK. Boyle is a robotics geek, and has designed a 'bot that not only conforms to the aesthetics of a worm, it actually mimics the very biological functions that give the creatures such efficient digging capabilities.

New Scientist reports:

The nematode can vary its wiggling frequency fourfold, giving it a wide range of speeds and undulating motions - and yet it has almost no easily detectable neural centre controlling this motion, Boyle says.

"It has an unusually small nervous system, comprising just over 300 neurons. Rather than using a central neural subcircuit as a pattern generator, it seems to generate its undulatory motion using around 100 neurons in a way largely driven by feedback from stretch sensors along its body," he says.

So he has created a 2-metre-long, 16-centimetre-wide robot that moves similarly - thanks to sensors that control motion in the same way as the worm's. The robot has 12 articulated segments, each of which can swing from side to side using a geared motor in its centre.

Additionally, Boyle's robot is made of a "tough nylon-based plastic" instead of aluminum, allowing prospective owners to print the worm on 3D printers at will, and cutting assembly costs by more than 50 percent.

New Scientist has a clip of the 'bot navigating a series of pegs on a table [http://www.newscientist.com/video/1037791580001-Worm-bot%20wriggles%20around%20obstacles.html], and yeah, in my entirely non-professional opinion, that thing moves like a giant worm made of space age plastics.

Once complete, the idea is that this worm could crawl through rubble, locate survivors and, alongside reporting their position to rescuers, pump in air and water to the trapped individuals.

Boyle's design is still a ways from actually assisting people, but his clever idea should prove an inspiration to future scientists and engineers. Remember boys and girls, Mother Nature has some awesome design chops.

Source: New Scientist [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20654-roboworm-to-wriggle-through-rubble-to-quake-survivors.html]

Permalink
 

dalek sec

Leader of the Cult of Skaro
Jul 20, 2008
10,237
0
0
For some reason that robot shape just creeps me the hell out. I mean I'm glad to see something like this coming to be and could save people's lives but I guess it's just some old fear or uneasy feeling I have about insects like that.
 

Alar

The Stormbringer
Dec 1, 2009
1,356
0
0
That's pretty ingenious. Hopefully they can plaster it with happy smiley faces and neon glow paint so people don't freak out when they first see them.
 

Rabid Toilet

New member
Mar 23, 2008
613
0
0
If I'm trapped under a ton of concrete, slowly suffocating, and a two meter long worm comes out of the wall, I'm going to flip the fuck out.

Pretty cool idea, though.
 

dalek sec

Leader of the Cult of Skaro
Jul 20, 2008
10,237
0
0
this isnt my name said:
Sorry bt if I was trapped under a building, my first thoughts would be "kill it".

Ooops broke your robot. Its too damn creepy.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who feels that way about them. I know it's impressive but damn it's creepy... D:

I swear it's burned into our DNA to hate bugs shaped like that.
 

Ghengis John

New member
Dec 16, 2007
2,209
0
0
Earnest Cavalli said:
Once complete, the idea is that this worm could crawl through rubble, locate survivors and, alongside reporting their position to rescuers, pump in air and water to the trapped individuals.
It's nice of them to think ahead and supply trapped survivors with the air they will need, to power their screams of horror.
 

Jabberwock xeno

New member
Oct 30, 2009
2,461
0
0
dalek sec said:
this isnt my name said:
Sorry bt if I was trapped under a building, my first thoughts would be "kill it".

Ooops broke your robot. Its too damn creepy.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who feels that way about them. I know it's impressive but damn it's creepy... D:

I swear it's burned into our DNA to hate bugs shaped like that.
It actually IS burned into our DNA.

Humans have universal fears of certain things because avoiding those things would help our ancenstors live.
 

Charli

New member
Nov 23, 2008
3,445
0
0
Put a smiley face and a cute voice on it and you'll save thousands of them from being squished due to "EWWWW" factor.

Fred the friendly worm. I expect this to be it's name.
 

Cpu46

Gloria ex machina
Sep 21, 2009
1,604
0
41
Jabberwock xeno said:
dalek sec said:
this isnt my name said:
Sorry bt if I was trapped under a building, my first thoughts would be "kill it".

Ooops broke your robot. Its too damn creepy.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who feels that way about them. I know it's impressive but damn it's creepy... D:

I swear it's burned into our DNA to hate bugs shaped like that.
It actually IS burned into our DNA.

Humans have universal fears of certain things because avoiding those things would help our ancenstors live.
Its said that Dragons are a mixture of traits from all the things our ancestors feared.

OT: Nice to know these things are being developed but I would probably destroy it if I was trapped under a building and saw one.
 

Azex

New member
Jan 17, 2011
350
0
0
3D printable Robo worms... cant help but think of a horrible future involving those worm things digging into peoples eyes and flesh like the things in MD Geist D:
 

Zetsubou^-^

New member
Mar 1, 2011
85
0
0
did they show its digging capabilities? because even if you got it into rubble, it would potentially have to dig to find survivors. also, what is its control type? because remote/wireless control is limited by range and whatever gets in between.

as for fear factor, painting/illuminating it might help, but you would probably have to put some kind of speaker that announces what it is and not to panic/kill it to really limit people freaking out.
you could give it a cute voice or something. XD