Defying its predecessors, SandBot is the first robot able to traverse sand. Robots normally face the same difficulties as humans when trying to walk across sand, often getting stuck or digging themselves into a rut, and even SandBot had trouble in its first trials. Like a car spinning its tires only to sink deeper, SandBot’s legs moved so quickly that the entire robot simply sank [Discovery News]. However, a few tweaks to its speed and the motion of limbs soon had it cruising like a veritable dune buggy.
The SandBot model is inspired by the movements of desert animals such as lizards and cockroaches. Instead of moving through sand at a steady rate, the new robot is designed with six limbs, three of which move slowly while in contact with the sand, while the others rotate quickly through the air to position themselves for the next step (see the video). In a year of trials, SandBot eventually traversed a track of “sand” made out of poppy seeds at a speed of about 30 centimeters per second, or at least 15 times faster than the Mars rovers [ScienceNOW Daily News].
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The next-generation Mars rover may be a rough-and-tumble robot that can roll down steep slopes, clamber over rocks, and can even be lowered down cliff faces into deep craters. The prototype, called Axel, takes its name from its simple design–a single axle with two wide, toothed wheels. A video shows that the rover is undeterred by sandy soil, uneven terrain, and other impediments that it can expect to encounter on Mars.
Axel is considerably more nimble than the rovers that are currently trekking across the Martian landscape, Spirit and Opportunity. When faced with the unknown slipperiness of a crater’s sloped sides, these part-autonomous robots require huge input and planning on behalf of their Earth-bound controllers–the scene has to be imaged, and the driving route planned with minute precision lest the ‘bots six small wheels become irrevocably jammed in the rocks [Fast Company].
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Fingerprints are for more than a good grip; they also allow fingers to feel fine textures, according to a new study. As fingers move across a surface, the intricate geography of the finger tips, known as epidermal ridges, help select and amplify just the right vibrations to convey information from the skin to the brain. Neuroscientist Ellen Lumkin compares the ridges on fingers to the cochlea in the ear. “Like the cochlea is a frequency analyzer for sounds, the fingertips are frequency analyzers for fingers,” says Lumpkin [Science News] Fingerprints help filter out the tactile equivalent of white noise.
When a finger sweeps over a finely textured surface, such as a cotton sleeve or a wooden coffee table, the interaction sends a large range of vibrations into the skin. Specialized sensors called Pacinian fibers, the tips of nerve fibers, detect only a select few of the vibrations — those right around 250 hertz — before sending the signal to the brain, where the touch sensation is processed [Science News]. But since Pacinian fibers are located relatively deep—about 2 millimeters—under the skin, researchers guessed that fingerprints help magnify the vibrations.
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Just weeks after NASA celebrated the Spirit rover’s fifth anniversary on Mars, the robotic explorer suffered a mysterious glitch that caused it to freeze in place for a day. The rover couldn’t tell NASA what had gone wrong or even what it did for that stretch of time, and it even lost track of the sun. “We don’t have a good explanation yet for the way Spirit has been acting for the past few days,” said JPL team leader Sharon Laubach. “Our next steps will be diagnostic activities” [BBC News].
The glitch came last Sunday, which marked Spirit’s 1,800th Martian day, or sol, on the planet. NASA sent the rover its driving directions for the day and Spirit acknowledged receiving them, but then it failed to move. More strangely, the Spirit had no memory of what it had done for that part of Sol 1800. The rover did not record actions, as it otherwise always does, to the part of its computer memory that retains information even when power is turned off, the so-called nonvolatile memory. “It’s almost as if the rover had a bout of amnesia,” said John Callas, the project manager for the rovers [The New York Times]. When NASA directed the rover on Monday to photograph the sun to establish its orientation, Spirit did so but reported that the sun was not in its “expected location.”
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In a preview of possible high-tech battles to come, Boeing has announced the successful test of a laser weapon designed to shoot down unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Robotic spy and combat planes are a hot field of military research because their use doesn’t endanger pilots, and because they can be smaller and harder to detect than conventional planes. But Boeing vice-president Gary Fitzmire argues that the military should be investing not just in UAVs, but also in devices that can destroy them. “Small UAVs armed with explosives or equipped with surveillance sensors are a growing threat on the battlefield,” he insists. “Laser Avenger, unlike a conventional weapon, can fire its laser beam without creating missile exhaust or gun flashes that would reveal its position. As a result, Laser Avenger can neutralize these UAV threats while keeping our troops safe” [The Register].
The weapon was tested at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, where the Laser Avenger tracked three UAVs flying “against a complex background of mountains and desert”, shooting down one of the UAVs [Gizmodo]. The device got its sci-fi tinged name because it’s a modified version of the Army’s existing Avenger air defense system, which had two missile launchers mounted on a Humvee. To build the Laser Avenger, Boeing swapped its ray gun and a target tracker for one of those missile launchers.
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Within a few decades, a surgeon may be able to make a tiny incision in a patient’s artery and insert a miniature robot that would scoot along through the blood vessel to the area of concern. The microbot could remove blockages, scrape plaque off of artery walls, remove a few cells from an organ to test for cancer, or could even, eventually, carry a tiny camera to show doctors exactly what’s going on inside the body. In a major step towards that science fiction-tinged surgical scenario, researchers have built and demonstrated a motor about twice the width of a human hair that could power such a microbot.
Researcher James Friend says that miniature mechanics have been a long time coming. “If you pick up an electronics catalogue, you’ll find all sorts of sensors, LEDs, memory chips etc that represent the latest in technology and miniaturisation,” he says. “Take a look however at the motors, and there are few changes from the motors available in the 1950s” [BBC News].
Doctors already snake catheters through blood vessels in many procedures to reduce the impact of surgery, but some blood vessels, like the labyrinthine network in the brain, are too narrow and delicate to reach with current technology. But a microbot might be able to reach even these most sensitive areas, and could one day be used to remove clots from stroke patients’ brains in the emergency room. The researchers have tested their motor in human blood and artificial arteries and later this year it will begin experiments in pigs, whose arteries and brains are similar to humans, before proceeding to full-scale human trials [Telegraph].
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Five years ago on Saturday, the Mars rover Spirit touched down on Mars in a bundle of airbags, beginning a saga of robotic exploration that has delighted NASA scientists and the public alike. The second rover, Opportunity, arrived on the other side of the planet a few weeks later, on January 21. Combined, the rovers have made more than 13 miles of tracks on Mars’ dusty surface and sent a quarter-million images back to Earth. Their instruments have uncovered evidence that Mars was once a far wetter and warmer place than the frigid, dusty world it is now [AP].
The rovers were designed to last at least 90 days on the Red Planet, but NASA had hopes that the robots would exceed their warranty and keep on trucking. However, few expected Spirit and Opportunity to last half a decade in the punishing conditions of Mars. As for what comes next, nobody really knows, says rover project manager John Callas: “We realise that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead” [BBC News].
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With robotics companies already selling devices that allow us to outsource intimate tasks like caring for children and the elderly, a concerned researcher is advising society to grapple with the ethical implications of relying on robots for personal care now, before the consumer trend goes any further. In an essay in the journal Science [subscription required], robotics expert Noel Sharkey notes that an estimated 5.5 million professional and personal service robots (a category that doesn’t include industrial robots) were sold in 2008, and says sales are likely to reach 11.5 million by 2011.
Babysitting robots are already on the market: They make conversation, recognize faces and keep track of kids. They’re not a replacement for TV or games, but for personal care — and some researchers worry that kids will be harmed. “If you leave a small child in front of the TV, you have to keep popping in to make sure they’re OK. But these are so safe that people will eventually leave their children in the care of robots” [Wired News], says Sharkey. No one knows what the long-term effects might be of letting an isolated child depend on a robot for companionship and learning, he says.
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The next robotic explorer in NASA’s ambitious Mars program will have to wait an extra two years before taking off towards the red planet, NASA officials announced yesterday. The Mars Science Laboratory was scheduled to lift off in the fall of 2009, but with unsolved issues with some of the spacecraft’s electrical motors … NASA officials no longer thought they could meet that schedule without rushing the testing program.“We’ve determined that trying for ‘09 would require us to assume too much risk, more than I think is appropriate for a flagship mission like Mars Science Laboratory,” Michael D. Griffin, NASA’s administrator, said [The New York Times].
Because Earth and Mars only draw near to each other every 26 months, the next possible launch window will come in 2011. The new delay is just the latest bit of bad news regarding the Science Lab, which has busted deadlines and budgets since the project was approved in 2006. The rover was initially expected to cost $1.6 billion, but the new delay will push costs up to about $2.3 billion, NASA officials said.
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A new intelligent pill designed by Philips, the Dutch electronics company, promises to deliver medicine in the right place, at the right time, inside your body. The company, best known for consumer products like webcams and wireless headphones, is packing some of the same technology into the new pill, known as the iPill. Containing a microprocessor, battery, wireless radio, pump and a reservoir for medication, the inch-long capsule is designed to treat digestive tract disorders such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis [Times Online].
Once swallowed, the iPill allows researchers to keep track of its precise location through a wireless transmitter. It sends dispatches about the temperature and acidity of its surroundings to an outside receiver as it travels through the GI tract over the course of a day or two. The acidity, measured by pH, of the gut decreases as the pill gets further from the stomach, and that allows researchers to pinpoint the place where the drug is needed [San Francisco Chronicle]. Researchers can pre-program drug release when certain conditions are met or cue the drug release using a remote controller.
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Just after NASA made the sad announcement that the Mars Phoenix Lander had run out of power and ceased communicating, word comes of power problems with the Mars rover Spirit, which has been blithely rolling over the Martian terrain for almost five years.
NASA revealed yesterday that dust storms last week left Spirit’s solar panels coated with dust and caused power levels to drop to an all-time low, and that the rover then shut down operations and went dormant. Spirit’s scientists are now hoping for a message signaling that the rover survived the storm and has recovered power.
Spirit may emerge unscathed. “We are cautiously optimistic that we can get through this dust storm without a catastrophe,” says rover project scientist Bruce Banerdt…. That’s because spring is dawning in the southern hemisphere, where Spirit is located, and the extra sunlight means the rover needs less energy to run its heaters. Had the storm occurred six months ago, during the local winter solstice, the craft would have less chance of survival, says Banerdt [New Scientist].
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Honda’s robotics division has unveiled the prototype of a strange new helper: a “walking assistant.” Honda says the robotic legs could restore mobility to the elderly or infirm, and could help prevent factory workers from straining their muscles–if they don’t mind being joined to the strange looking device. The user would employ the device by stepping into a pair of shoes attached to jointed legs. The legs support a mildly-scary looking U-shaped saddle, which cups the wearer’s groin and buttocks firmly to deliver solid uplift…. Honda say that the machine reduces load on the hip joints, and helps not just with walking but also standing – and especially with maintaining a crouched position [The Register].
The device, which weighs about 14 pounds and is powered by a motor and Lithium ion battery, is the result of Honda’s nine-year-old initiative to develop mobility-assisting technologies. The creation of the device borrowed heavily from the walking research that went into Honda’s advanced humanoid robot, ASIMO [Daily Tech]. Honda hasn’t yet announced plans to begin selling the walking assistants, but tests of the prototype will begin this month.
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One of the teams competing for the $20 million top prize in the Google Lunar X Prize has announced its plans for an ambitious series of moon missions, beginning with a proposed trip to the historic Apollo 11 landing site. The team, Astrobotic Technology Inc., wants to send a rover to Tranquility Base in May 2010 to see how the relics left behind by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have weathered over the 40 years.
The proposal has sparked a debate over whether new rovers can be trusted to not disturb the hallowed ground. Astrobotic Tech says its rover will land far from the Apollo 11 site and will be able to recognize and circumvent footprints and artifacts on the lunar surface, but not everyone shares this optimism. [Space policy expert] John Logsdon … believes the team should first perform trial runs on Earth. “I’d like to see them demonstrate their ability to do a precision landing someplace else before they try it next to the Apollo 11 site,” Logsdon says. “You wouldn’t have to be very far off to come down on top of the flag or something dramatic like that” [Seed].
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Five sophisticated computer programs chatted with human examiners this weekend and tried to convince the judges that they were conversing with another human being, vying to be the first to pass the Turing Test for artificial intelligence. Although none of the programs achieved their goal of duping 30 percent of the judges, several came quite close to that threshold and all fooled at least one judge. Said organizer Kevin Warwick: “…although the machines aren’t yet good enough to fool all of the people all of the time, they are certainly at the stage of fooling some of the people some of the time” [Telegraph].
The contest draws on the ideas of British mathematician Alan Turing, who came up with a subjective but simple rule for determining whether machines were capable of thought. Writing in 1950, Turing argued that conversation was proof of intelligence. If a computer talked like a human, then for all practical purposes it thought like a human too [AP]. Since 1991, an annual competition has been conducted in which judges chat simultaneously with computer programs and their “confederate” humans, and try to determine which is which.
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NASA is keeping the faith and pushing forward with its most ambitious Mars rover mission to date, despite serious cost overruns and technical problems. NASA officials announced on Friday that they expect the Mars Science Laboratory to launch as planned in 2009, rebutting speculation that NASA would postpone the craft’s launch until 2011, or even cancel the mission. “It’s easy to say, ‘let’s just cancel it and move on’ but we’ve poured over a billion-and-half dollars into this,” [NASA official Ed] Weiler said. “The science is critical. It’s a flagship mission in the Mars program and as long as we think we have a good technical chance to make it we are going to do what we have to do” [SPACE.com].
The SUV-sized rover was originally expected to cost $1.6 billion, but it’s already $300 million over budget and the latest cost overruns may push the final price to over $2 billion. To meet costs, NASA may be forced to scale back or postpone other Mars missions, and could even take funds from other planetary missions. A group of scientists that advises NASA on planetary missions called this week for an outside investigation into the Mars Science Lab’s financial troubles. The scientists noted that the pricey project was a “poor model for future missions” [AP].
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