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  • Rather than building an exact metal and plastic copy of an insect's bones and muscles, Stanford engineer Mark Cutkosky and his students Sean Bailey and Jorge Cham (Cutkosky at left) stripped a cockroach to its essence. The Mini-sprawl has padded feet, with springy couplings and pneumatic pistons that yank the legs up and down. Like a real roach, the robot skitters forward as each set of legs touches the surface. The next step: creating a robot that can turn and vary its speed. Stanford, CA. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 99 top.
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  • Utilizing the research results of University of California biologist Robert Full, Martin Buehler of McGill University and Daniel E. Koditschek of the University of Michigan seized upon when they created RHex (controlled by graduate student Uluç Saranli). Tested in a laboratory (at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor) dominated by an antique poster for Isaac Asimov's book, I, Robot, RHex could become a "companion robot," Buehler says, following its owner around like a friendly mechanical shadow. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 97.
    USA_rs_470_qxxs.jpg
  • Gloved to ward off the possibility of a nasty bite, Berkeley biologist Robert J. Full prepares to pluck a gecko from his office door. A source of inspiration to roboticists around the world, Full's Poly-PEDAL laboratory is one of the premier research centers in the field of animal locomotion. (Polypedal means "many-footed"; PEDAL is an acronym for the Performance, Energetics, and Dynamics of Animal Locomotion.) UC Berkeley (California) From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 91.
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  • Professor Robert J. Full, in front of a poster of a ghost crab, in his Poly-PEDAL biology lab at UC Berkeley. Full studies animal locomotion on miniaturized treadmills, using hi-speed imaging and force measurements to map out how these creatures actually propel themselves. Cockroaches, crabs, geckos, centipedes have all been studied intently. Full's Poly-PEDAL Lab at UC Berkeley has been working with roboticists for years, supplying them with information on small animal locomotion that is used to construct innovative robots. UC Berkeley, CA, USA.
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  • Professor Robert J. Full's Poly-PEDAL Lab at UC Berkeley has been working with roboticists for years, supplying them with information on small animal locomotion that is used to conStruct innovative robots. Recently, the Lab has been working with the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), testing and evaluating artificial muscles. Dr. Kenneth Meijer (from Holland) compares and measures a Stanford Artificial Muscle with a natural one from the leg of the Death Head Cockroach. After cooling the cockroach and exposing leg extensor muscle number 179, an electrode is suctioned into the muscle to simulate the nerve-to-muscle connection. Published in Stern Magazine, February 11th, 2000.
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  • In a years-long quest, students at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan are constantly tweaking the programming of WABIAN R-II in the hope of making the heavy, two-meter-tall machine walk as easily as a human being. WABIAN sways from side to side as it walks, but its builders are not discouraged by its imperfections: walking in a straight line, which humans can do without thinking, in fact requires coordinated movements of such fantastic complexity that researchers are pleased if their creations can walk at all. Indeed, researchers built the robot partly to help themselves understand the physics of locomotion. It took decades of work to bring WABIAN to its present state: its first ancestor was built in 1972. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 14.
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  • Looming out of the shadows in the Humanoid Research Lab of Tokyo's Waseda University, WABIAN-RII is capable of walking and even dancing. WABIAN sways from side to side as it walks, but its builders are not discouraged by its imperfections: walking in a straight line, which humans can do without thinking, in fact requires coordinated movements of such fantastic complexity that researchers are pleased if their creations can walk at all. Indeed, researchers built the robot partly to help themselves understand the physics of locomotion. It took decades of work to bring WABIAN to its present state: its first ancestor was built in 1972. Japan. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 36.
    Japan_JAP_rs_230_qxxs.jpg
  • Joseph Ayers, head of Northeastern University's Marine Research Laboratory, has been researching lobster locomotion for more than twenty years. Based on Ayers's studies, staff researcher Jan Witting is building a robotic lobster that will capture in detail the behavior of a real lobster. The project has enough potential for sweeping mines that it is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Nahant, Massachusettes. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 110-111.
    USA_rs_7_qxxs.jpg
  • Lurching from side to side like an infant figuring out how to walk, the biped-locomotion robot in the Fukuda Lab at Nagoya University tentatively steps forward under the parental supervision of graduate student Kazuo Takahashi. Designed by Toshio Fukuda, a professor of mechanical engineering, the robot is intended to test what Fukuda calls "hierarchical evolutionary algorithms" software that repeats an action, learning from its mistakes until it approaches perfection. Japan. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 46-47.
    Japan_JAP_rs_20_qxxs.jpg

Peter Menzel Photography

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