Modular robotic system that can be swallowed and will assemble inside the G.I. Tract for therapeutic and diagnostic procedures. This research involves the investigation of the self-assembly of the ARES robot inside the stomach. Using a specific magnet configuration on the connection face, assembly success rates of up to 90% are possible.
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Adrian Bowyer and Vik Olliver with a parent RepRapRepRap machine, made by the RepRap on the left. The child machine made its first successful grandchild part at 14:00 hours UTC on 29 May 2008 at Bath University in the UK, a few minutes after it was assembled. machine, made on a conventional rapid prototyper, and the first complete working child.
RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer shown on the right - a self-replicating machine. This 3D printer builds the parts up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you about €30,000. And it isn’t even designed so that it can make itself. So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs are about €500). That way it’s accessible to small communities in the developing world as well as individuals in the developed world. Following the principles of the Free Software Movement we are distributing the RepRap machine at no cost to everyone under the GNU General Public Licence.
Not counting nuts and bolts RepRap can make 60% of its parts; the other parts are designed to be cheaply available everywhere. This is an interesting coincidence: we can make 60% of our proteins; the other parts are evolved to be cheaply available everywhere…
The primary goal of the RepRap project is to create and to give away a makes-useful-stuff machine that, among other things, allows its owner cheaply and easily to make another such machine for someone else.
To increase that 60%, the next version of RepRap will be able to make its own electric circuitry - a technology we have already proved experimentally - though not its electronic chips.
website here
Amazing video. Look at the black all-consuming digital swarm that affects space and objects.
Researchers have already developed remote control systems for rats, pigeons and even sharks. The motivation is simple: why labour for years to build robots that imitate the ways animals move when you can just plug into living creatures and hijack systems already optimised by millions of years of evolution? “There’s a long history of trying to develop micro-robots that could be sent out as autonomous devices, but I think many engineers have realised that they can’t improve on Mother Nature,” says insect neurobiologist John Hildebrand at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Furthermore, animals’ sensory abilities far outstrip the vast majority of artificial sensors. Sharks, moths and rats, for example, have amazing olfactory systems that allow them to detect the faintest traces of chemicals. And if you can hide your control system within your cyborg’s body, it would be virtually indistinguishable from its unadulterated kin - the perfect spy.
José Delgado at Yale University created the first cyborg animal in the 1950s. Delgado discovered where to insert electrodes in the brains of several species, including bulls, to acquire crude control of their movement. In one dramatic demonstration in 1963, he stood in a bullring in Córdoba, Spain, as one of his cyborg bulls charged at him. With just seconds between him and a good goring, Delgado flicked a switch and the bull skidded to a halt.
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This is no ordinary robot control system - a plain old microchip connected to a circuit board. Instead, the controller nestles inside a small pot containing a pink broth of nutrients and antibiotics. Inside that pot, some 300,000 rat neurons have made - and continue to make - connections with each other.
As they do so, the disembodied neurons are communicating, sending electrical signals to one another just as they do in a living creature. We know this because the network of neurons is connected at the base of the pot to 80 electrodes, and the voltages sparked by the neurons are displayed on a computer screen.
It’s these spontaneous electrical patterns that researchers at the University of Reading in the UK want to harness to control a robot. If they can do so reliably, by stimulating the neurons with signals from sensors on the robot and using the neurons’ response to get the robots to respond, they hope to gain insights into how brains function. Such insights might help in the treatment of conditions like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.
The Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems project aims to create literal shutterbugs — camera-toting insects whose nerves have grown into their internal silicon chip so that wranglers can control their activities. DARPA researchers are also raising cyborg beetles with power for various instruments to be generated by their muscles.
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The BigDog, from Boston Dynamics, a company specializing in human simulation, is just weird. A robotic pack mule that runs on petrol, travels at up to 3.3mph over all sorts of terrain, and can carry up to 120 lb, BigDog has received $10 million of funding from the Pentagon. Check how it moves in a 2006 video after the jump.
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The Morphing Micro Air and Land Vehicle (MMALV) is a hybrid air and land vehicle which can be used to serve as a remote sensor platform. The purpose of this vehicle is to serve as a device that can fly into hazardous/hostile environments, then land and walk around to explore, gather and relay intelligence so that decisions can be made about how to proceed in a dangerous situation without having to physically send people in to do the data collection. In this way, the risk to human lives can be minimized. Applications of the vehicle include intelligence operations, first responders who depend on difficult-to-obtian, real-time information to make decisions, and search & rescue operations.
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Three spoked appendages, called “wheel-legs”, combine the speed and simplicity of wheels with the high mobility of legs. The robot can surmount obstacles significantly greater than the radius of the wheel-legs - a difficult feat for wheeled vehicles.
To surmount obstacles of much greater relative magnitude, a version of the robot, dubbed Jumping Mini-Whegs™, has been developed. It can surmount obstacles of 2-3 body lengths high, such as a stair. Based on abstracted biological principles, this small robot combines simplicity, robustness and reliability to provide a desirable combination of speed, mobility and versatility.
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Spatial Robots, created by Miles Kemp in 2007, is a website dedicated to cataloging, discussing and promoting interactive spatial systems, user interfaces and emerging technology in architecture.