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what's new from japan: snake robots are also known also as serpentine robots .............................................................................................................
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| - august 2003 - all you need to know about robots what's new from japan snake-like robots --- souryu snake robots are also known as serpentine robots. as the name suggests, these robots possess multiple actuated joints thus mulitple degrees of freedom. this gives them superior ability to flex, reach, and approach a huge volume in its workspace with infinte number of configurations. this redundance in configurations gives them the technical name: hyper redundant robots. ideally, the future snake design will consist of three degree of freedom stages - roll, pitch, and extension. souryu or blue dragon, is a remote-controlled robot designed by tokyo institute of technology's professor shigeo hirose. the snake-like souryu crawls using six tracks, two on each side of its three-part body. it is equipped with a camera and microphone to search for victims, and can bend at the joints or roll over on its side to maneuver through rubble. --- ACM-R3 the first successful mechanical snake was also developed by professor shigeo hirose. the active cord mechanism consisted of 13-links. spider-like robots --- comet III was designed by chiba university professor kenzo nonami, and is part of a state-funded project to develop de-mining technologies for afghanistan. four metres long and weighing one tonne, the comet III walks on six sturdy metal legs. an additional limb in front is equipped with a metal detector and radar to find mines, while a second sprays paint on the ground to mark the spot. legged-walking robots --- yambo III one of the moving and task performing robots, the legged-walking type, which has high terrain adaptability, is yambo III. generally walking robots need so many degrees of freedom (DOF) that robots become heavy and its mechanism become more complicated. one of the effective solutions to these problems is developing the robot with bipedal configuration. --- morph 3 officials and researchers in japan, home to almost half the world's 756,000 industrial robots, hope a new robot industry will give the stagnant economy a boost. japanese researchers want to advance the technology by improving mobility or making robots more autonomous. morph 3, a 38-cm-tall humanoid robot, tries to stand after being laid on its back during an experiment at the chiba institute of technology in narashino, chiba prefecture. the project is a joint project between kitano symbiotic system project and leading edge design corp. athletic properties of the robot become the highest among the same size robots in the world. the robot appeared on the stage of robocup 2002 held in fukuoka, japan. --- cyclops is an interactive human-shaped machine. the machine is equipped with a single camera eye and a spinal column structure. this work was developed for 'robot meme exhibition' at the national museum of innovative technology and emerging science, tokyo, in 2001. cyclops was shown in september 2002at ars electronica center in linz, austria as a part of its permanent exhibition. --- DB an expert in brain science, kawato developed the DB, a humanoid robot that can imitate human action, based on his knowledge that the cerebellum plays a key role in learning and memory. however, the robot has managed to learn only 24 kinds of human action over three years. --- atom japanese researchers are advocating a grand project, under which the government would spend 50 billion yen a year over three decades to develop a humanoid robot with the mental, physical and emotional capacity of a 5-year-old human - the atom project. 'most of today's robots operate with a program written by humans. in order to develop a robot that can think and move like a 5-year-old, we have to first understand the mechanism of how human brains work,' mitsuo kawato, chief of the computational neuroscience laboratories at the kyoto-based advanced telecommunications research institute internationa said, admitting the difficulty of his project. 'that will be equal to understanding human beings.' tthe project was inspired by the popular robot animation series 'tetsuwan atom' by the late cartoonist osamu tezuka (unlike cartoonist tezuka's 'atom' character, known as 'astro boy' overseas, based on an image of a 9-year-old boy, the atom project aims to create a humanoid robot with the physical, intellectual and emotional capacity of a 5-year-old that would be able to think and move on its own). the researchers say it would help promote scientific and technological advances in japan, just like the u.s. apollo project, which not only succeeded in landing men on the moon but contributed to a broad range of technological breakthroughs - a project of this magnitude would inject much-needed vigor into a nation depressed from years of economic slump. ---  see the hottest entertainment robots ---  see the hottest clean-up robots --- all you need to know about robots designboom's archive http://www.designboom.com/eng/education/robot.html --- more --- on dr. mitsuo kawato http://www.isd.atr.co.jp/~kawato --- on tetsuwan atom http://www.astroboy-online.com/history.php --- robot time-line http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2001/artificial_intelligence/1531432.stm --- on the cool robots of the week http://ranier.hq.nasa.gov/telerobotics_page/coolrobots.html --- on typologies of robots http://mozu.mes.titech.ac.jp --- on world's greatest android projects http://www.androidworld.com/prod01.htm --- a list of good robotics sites http://www.androidworld.com/prod05.htm ---  ------- monthly designboom newsletter ------- ------- ? comments and contact us ? ------- |
 souryu  ACM-R3  comet III  yambo III  morph 3 photo by yukio shimzu  cyclops photo by yukio shimzu  db  tetsuwan atom or astro boy |
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