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Spider-Man robot spins own web to abseil off a cliff
Spider-Man can leap off tall buildings and swing through the New York skyline by shooting a dragline from his wrist.
Now there is a spider-inspired robot that can perform the same trick. It could be used to explore rocky planets, spinning itself a line to abseil down when it comes to the edge of a cliff, for example.
"Spiders travel around surface-free space between tree branches and can position themselves in mid-air," says LiYu Wang, who has developed the robot alongside colleagues at the Bio-Inspired Robotics Lab at ETH Zürich in Switzerland.
"There is no technology that allows a robot to do the same thing except flying, and then the amount of payload they can carry becomes a major issue."
To spin the dragline, the robot uses thermoplastic adhesives, which are solid at room temperature but form a liquid when heated to around 70 °C.
A stick of the material is fed into a small chamber and heated, before being fired out of a nozzle into the open air, where it begins to harden into a line. As it is pushed out of the nozzle, the line passes between two motor-controlled wheels, which grab it and help to pull the cable out of the device.
Hold the line
Because the material has not yet fully cooled, it remains sticky, allowing the line to attach itself to any solid surface.
The robot then uses the wheels to grip as it travels down the line at a speed of around 12 centimetres a minute, says Wang.
At the moment, the system only produces vertical draglines, but the team plans to modify it to produce horizontal lines as well, allowing the robot to spin webs between surfaces. This would enable the robot to carry heavy objects across cracks or craters, says Wang.
Roderich Gross at the Natural Robotics Lab in Sheffield University, UK, says such a robot could be really useful when faced with difficult terrain. "It could also be used on other planets where robots will encounter environments that haven't been shaped to our needs yet, so you don't know what capabilities you will need," he says. "A robot that is flexible would be ideal in that kind of environment."
Last year the team unveiled a sticky-footed robot that could climb walls while carrying up to five times its own mass.
Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24933-spiderman-robot-spins-own-web-to-abseil-off-a-cliff.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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