Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
The STAR Robot - From Minority Report?
The STAR (Sprawl Tuned Autonomous Robot) is a 3D-printed robot modeled after an insect's ability to squeeze into even the tiniest spaces. It was developed by students at UC Berkeley's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab. the STAR is able to flatten its legs down to slip under a small gap and then raise them up again to climb over larger obstacles.
(STAR (Sprawl Tuned Autonomous Robot))
With the exception of the electronics, each component of the STAR was built using a ProJet 3000 3D printer, meaning a full robot can be manufactured quickly and cheaply. The main core of the bot holds its control board and battery, which are connected to the six individual legs that propel it forward. Each of the legs has three spokes measuring 2.8 cm (1.1 in) with a 90-degree gap between them, which allow it to crawl over obstacles 4 cm (1.6 in) higher than if it just had wheels.A brushed DC motor provides motion to each set of legs, while a 300 mA/hr LiPo 4V battery gives it enough power to run at full speed for 30 minutes on a single charge. Altogether, the tiny robot weighs just 73 g (2.6 oz).
What really sets the STAR apart from other robots, though, is its ability to adjust its sprawl angle (i.e. the angle between its body and legs) over a range of 150 degrees to adapt to different situations. Depending on the angle, the robot can move faster over different surfaces, climb over taller objects, or slip into narrow passageways, among other tasks.
At a sprawl angle of zero degrees, the robot lays flat on the ground and has a height of just 2.5 cm (1 in), a length of only 12 cm (4.7 in) and a width of 11 cm (4.3 in). It can't actually move in this position, but by changing its sprawl just a few degrees, the robot's legs can touch the ground to move underneath an obstacle, such as a door, without gaining much height. At a 90-degree sprawl, the robot can fit through smaller vertical spaces and travel over rough terrain more easily.
Fans of Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report recall the spider robots, which were able slip easily under doors. Start the video below at about 1 minutes.
Via Gizmag; thanks to an anonymous reader for contributing the tip on this story. I'm traveling this week, and it's much harder for me to look for stories.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 8/1/2013)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Robotics ")
Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing Runs With His G1 Robot Army
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
Blue Collar AI Goes To Work To Mine Its Own Crypto
Blue collar bot.
HandelBot Helps Two-Handed Robots Learn Piano
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'
Woven Fiber Electronic Skin For Robots
'... all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.' - Harl Vincent, 1934.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large
The Shape of Things To Come
Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark
'I can see in the dark, Case.'
What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
