The making of Smart Bird

We bring interesting and educational videos for our readers.
In this video we present the making of smart bird.
http://www.festo.com/smartbird_en

SmartBird is an ultralight but powerful flight model with excellent aerodynamic qualities and extreme agility. With SmartBird, Festo has succeeded in deciphering the flight of birds - one of the oldest dreams of humankind.

This bionic technology-bearer, which is inspired by the herring gull, can start, fly and land autonomously -- with no additional drive mechanism. Its wings not only beat up and down, but also twist at specific angles. This is made possible by an active articulated torsional drive unit, which in combination with a complex control system attains an unprecedented level of efficiency in flight operation. Festo has thus succeeded for the first time in creating an energy-efficient technical adaptation of this model from nature.

Autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicle (AUGV)

The advances in autonomous motion of the vehicles in air, ground or water has come to some new front.
In the video presented below, autonomous unmanned ground vehicle is shown.
It has been claimed that given point A (starting point) and point B (ending point), AUGV is able to travel autonomously.

Automated Motion Planning

Automation is fun.
The presentation is very clear and concise. No explanation necessary!

Six Leged LEGO robot

Follow the blog:
http://thenxtstep.blogspot.com/
to get NXT lego Mindstroms updates and development ideas.

Tracking a Ball with Compressed Air System

This is fun experiment done by graduate students of Urban Champaign.



They point out a 1989 paper [E. H. Brandt, “Levitation in physics,” Science, vol. 243, no. 4889, pp. 349–355] to illustrate how such system was long known to scientific community. However, getting ball into complex trajectory is a tricky business. I agree. The control strategy being implemented is a feedback mechanism with implementation of extended Kalman filter for state estimation. They track the object with stereo vision camera and use classical fluid dynamics model for the air jet being mounted with two degrees of freedom.

Whenever possible, have a look at their [paper].

Mind over Matter: Brain Computer Interface

Brain Computer Interface is one of the challenge lying at the fore front of today's research.
We all know that our brain sends and receives numerous amount of signals from different parts of the body. Out of which, useful signals are picked up and are used in activities such as planning and movements as well as other activities. For people with severe neural diseases the brain-body communication might not be as easy as for the healthy person. So, even if the brain wants to send out the signal, decrypting what you are thinking in real time is really a huge challenge. This is challenging since you have to find the message deeply buried in the noise of the signals that the neurons are producing. It is just like talking at the busy railway station where everyone needs to talk: may be much more complicated than that. They are talking in some coded language and you need to understand it.

Fortunately, today's processing power of computer and advancements in research is making it possible.

Please watch a nice presentation by Stanford Research Group:

How Differential Works!

I came across this nicely explained video of how differential works!
I had made a differential quite a while back using LEGO, it looks like these:

In the following video, I liked the way it has been nicely explained and illustrated for general public.
Differentials proved to be very valuable innovation for motor driven vehicles. It was interesting to learn about lowered shaft driven differentials.

Rodney Brooks: Nice Robotics work

Robotics as become one of the essential feature for our daily life. The robots has not only served us in the manufacturing process but also has come to life for direct interactions.
Are you ready for it?

Robotic Vision on the Sony Aibo

This is wonderful example of how pattern recognition can be implemented for robotics and get the jobs done!

Robotic Designs Inspired by Animals

Bio-mimics are the robots which are inspired by animals.
Taking into account the informations that has been fine tuned by the evolution machinery should be a good idea. Since the body shape and functions has already been fine tuned to work efficiently under given conditions, scientists can not only design them but also can have a greater insights into how the things work. {However, the question on how efficiently the nature has designed animals can be open question.}

In this video, taken from new scientists, a nice demo of bio-mimics has been presented. Please Enjoy!

Walking Robot: Honda Asimo

Physics of Walking is very practical field for robotics.
Walking robot looks really nice and is pleasing to the people. People are simply impressed by humanoid robots, the value added by self standing and walking robot can just amaze people.
Honda has been developing the walking robots called Asimo.
More about Asimo can be read here ...

In this video Asimo has been presented with different conditions...
Enjoy!

Robotics: Movement

When it comes to building stuffs we want something that moves. Few days back AD published amazing boston dynamics dog/mule. This one is similar, it can move thru' the obstacles, that is amazing. I am impressed by the way it tackles the flip at the end of the video.


The next one is moving through the liquid.


The next step would be to add some bits of intelligence onto them!!!

Robotic World

When ever we talk about robots we might think of "Terminator" the movie and enjoy but I think that day is not far when we will be able to see in real life. Enjoy watching this movie about robotic dog named BIG DOG.

Communicating Robots: Re-assemble

Have you see the Mission Impossible?

In one of the sequel, the small bots search for Tom Cruise. Tom hides in the tub; because he had left a bubble, the robot decides to run an experiment. It then sends some electric currents through the tub. Shocked by it, he comes on surface where he faces the bots.
I remember this scene because it involves a high level of science fiction. The robots capable of spreading like bugs in the house, to map and to search the desired places and having capacity to run experiments. Moreover, highly organized by virtue of the communications.
The following video presents communicating parts. The importance lies in the fact that they can re-assemble.