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Off-Road Robots Scamper Across Sand
A six-legged, hamster-sized robot that can easily scamper across sand, gravel and similarly unstable surfaces could lead to better rovers for exploring Mars and other alien worlds, researchers say.
Such robots could also find use in search-and-rescue missions; for researchers, the robots could shed light on how animals such as sand lizards run and how kangaroo rats hop on grainy terrains, investigators added.
Scientists are increasingly designing robots that can go where humans can or should not venture. To create such machines, many inventors are taking inspiration from nature, analyzing how animals roam across landscapes. For instance, snake-like robots might slither into crevices to help find disaster victims.
Surfaces such as sand, gravel, soil and mud pose especially difficult challenges since these materials can flow around legs in ways that are often more complex than the movements of fluids like water. To learn how to best navigate grainy surfaces, researchers led by physicist Chen Li at the University of California at Berkeley experimented with a six-legged droid. It measures just 5 inches (13 centimeters) long and weighs about a third of a pound (150 grams), or about the length and weight of a pet hamster. Researchers used a 3D printer to create legs in a variety of shapes, then analyzed which ones helped the robot best scamper across poppy seeds, glass beads and natural sand. [See also: Robot Legs Mimic How Babies Walk]
Robo-legs
The results of these experiments closely matched simulations the researchers developed to predict the robot's motions. In addition, these findings revealed laws governing the walking behavior, which could be generalized across many different grainy materials. The results helped refine the robot's leg shape and walking style, with researchers arriving at a design that optimized each of the droid's steps.
"I was floored by how well the models developed by Li and Tingnan Zhang were able to predict the performance of the legged robots across a range of granular materials," researcher Daniel Goldman, a physicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and supervisor of the project, told TechNewsDaily. (In a video, the robot scampers along very quickly.)
In the end, the best legs were convex, made in the shape of the letter "C." Compared to other leg designs, this shape helped the robot sink less and move faster when traversing beds of grains. The researchers estimate this robot reached a maximum speed of about 1.6 mph (2.6 km/h) and took about five steps per second.
"As long as the legs are convex, the robot generates large lift and small body drag, and thus can run fast," Goldman said. "When the limb shape was changed to flat or concave, the performance dropped. This information is important for optimizing the energy efficiency and performance of legged robots."
Although the robot is still not quite as effective at walking across sand and gravel as a lizard or insect, this research might help improve the performance of roving and walking droids such as Mars rovers.
"We can start looking at why certain desert organisms have specific feet shapes or other adaptations that may also help them move," Goldman said.
Source: http://www.technewsdaily.com/17422-off-road-robots.html
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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