Mecant Research in this field was started in the middle of the 80s and it is today the most rapidly growing research activity in the laboratory. More specifically, the research has concerned problems encountered when designing or applying mobile robots or robotic machines in outdoor or other poorly structured environments, such as work sites in forestry, mining or construction, and in some specific environments like critical process plants or in space. The laboratory has been successful in several internationally well known projects in the field. In the following the main milestones in the past and the current activities are surveyed and links to further information are given. The first results of the development of the walking machine called MECANT were published in 1992. Another important project in the past was the Esprit II Panorama project Advanced perception and navigation system for Autonomous Applications completed in 1993.
New Robot Reproduces on Its Own May 11, 2005 Scientists have created a robot that can replicate itself in minutes. The team behind the machine says the experiment shows that self- reproduction is not unique to living organisms The researchers add that the ability could be harnessed to drive major advances in nanotechnology, the science of the very small, and may even lead to space colonization by robots. Developed by researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, the machine was constructed from cube-shaped robotic units (modules) that functioned independently. A four-module robot could assemble an exact replica of itself in just two and a half minutes. Writing for tomorrow's issue of the science journal Nature, the researchers say the plastic robotic cubes each contained a microprocessor, a motor, and electromagnets. "The cubes are aware of contact and release events [with other cubes] and of the order in which they were assembled," he said. Lipson says the robot can do little but self-reproduce. Recycling Robots