Robot adapts to injury

Lindsay France/University Photography Graduate student Viktor Zykov, former student Josh Bongard, now a professor at the University of Vermont, and Hod Lipson, Cornell assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, watch as a starfish-like robot pulls itself forward, using a gait it developed for itself. the robot's ability to figure out how it is put together, and from that to learn to walk, enables it to adapt and find a new gait when it is damaged. Nothing can possibly go wrong ... go wrong ... go wrong ... The truth behind the old joke is that most robots are programmed with a fairly rigid "model" of what they and the world around them are like. So Cornell researchers have built a robot that works out its own model of itself and can revise the model to adapt to injury. "Most robots have a fixed model laboriously designed by human engineers," Lipson explained. This four-legged robot is not preprogrammed to walk.

nBot, a two wheel balancing robot nBot Balancing Robot David P. Anderson nBot: 27 January 2003 Update: 14 Sept 2013: nBot Rev 6.0. nBot completely rebuilt as Version 6.0 after the disastrous LiPo Fire of 2012. Update: 14 June 2012: nBot finally has some avoidance and navigation sensors, two PING))) ultrasonic sonar sensors, and five SHARP IR distance detectors, in addition to the MicroStrain FAS-G IMU. Here is a video of nBot doing perimeter following (72M mpeg) in the basement of the building where I work. I've been working on a two-wheeled balancing robot, nBot . This robot was featured as NASA's Cool Robot of the Week for 19 May 2003. The basic idea for a two-wheeled dynamically balancing robot is pretty simple: drive the wheels in the direction that the upper part of the robot is falling. The robot hardware was built in my home machine shop. Rev 1. Rev 2. Rev 3. The ball-bearing pivot and angle sensor were replaced by a piezo-electric gyroscope and ADXL202 accelerometer mounted just above the motor deck. Rev 4.