Could a robot make its own language? It was reviewed by researchers from Germany through a robot named Myon.

Engineers at the laboratory at Humboldt University, Berlin, creating a humanoid that can create their own language.

Produced by the design company “Frackenpohl Poulhelm” and plastics company “Bayer Material Science”, Myon are part of a project called Artifical Language Evoluton on Autonomous Robots (ALEAR).

NASA published their rock climbing robot project. The robots called TRESSA. TRESSA is a group of three autonomous robots that work together to climb steep slopes. And by steep we mean up to 90 degree slope angles. Two of the robots, called Anchorbots, remaining at the top and support the third robot, named Cliffbot, with tethers as it negotiates the rocks. The Anchorbots dynamically adjust the tension of the tethers, allowing Cliffbot to go up, down, or across the slope. This is more complicated than it sounds as the Anchorbots have to combine the amount of tether tension needed to offset gravitational forces with anticipation of desired motion of Cliffbot. The robots also monitor themselves and each other for faults and communicate any potentially unsafe conditions to each other.

The TRESSA (Teamed Robots for Exploration and Science on Steep Areas) system, previously cited in the literature as Cliffbot (Pirjanian et al., 2002; Mumm,Farritor, Huntsberger and Schenker, 2003; Schenker et al., 2003b; Mumm, Farritor, Pirjanian, Leger and Schenker, 2004), is designed to allow access to steep slopes that are not feasible for traditional wheeled rovers.

The news originally come from www.gizmag.com. Posted at December 13, 2008.

Snake-like robots to assist construction work

Researchers at the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory at Virginia Tech have designed a series of serpentine robots that are able to climb poles and inspect structures too dangerous or inaccessible for humans. The robots coil themselves around a beam and roll upward using an oscillating joint motion, gathering important structural data with cameras and sensors.

A 2006 US Bureau of Labor Statistics report listed 809 fatal falls from raised structures and scaffolding. The RoMeLa team hope that by increasing the use of autonomous robots in construction, humans can work in safer conditions. The HyDRAS models (Hyper-redundant Discrete Robotic Articulated Serpentine for climbing) use electric motors , while the CIRCA (Climbing Inspection Robot with Compressed Air) uses a compressed air muscle. Currently the robots are tethered to laptops, but future designs will incorporate a microprocessor and power source, allowing them to operate independently. All robots in the series are roughly three feet long, though the CIRCA is lighter than the HyDRAS.

This news come from Maui, you can visit the original news at www.mauinews.com.

Maui High School senior Devin Tamashiro said it’s just a way to be sure he doesn’t forget what he’s learned in his programming class.

But it’s also a lesson in teamwork, design, engineering and coordination among students with different skill sets to represent their school in an international competition that could take them to a world championship in Dallas in April.

As with most competitions, success can come just from competing well even if you don’t win because the process of learning is its own reward. But there’s also a goal of winning.

Choosing DC motors is not simple as it says. You need to calculate the velocoty, voltage, current and the most important is… torque… I’ve some experience about choosing the DC motor for my robots. Sometime my robot going wild with high velocity motor and low torque motor.  Sometime my robot is to slow but the acceleration is very good, so easy to be controlled.

If you build a robot, you must pay attention about this tutorial.

From the start, DC motors seem quite simple. Apply a voltage to both terminals, and weeeeeeee it spins. But what if you want to control which direction the motor spins? Correct, you reverse the wires. Now what if you want the motor to spin at half that speed? You would use less voltage. But how would you get a robot to do those things autonomously? How would you know what voltage a motor should get? Why not 50V instead of 12V? What about motor overheating? Operating motors can be much more complicated than you think.