DailyDirt: Robots Doing The Heavy Lifting
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Robots are cool in so many ways. People usually think of them as huge machines that are clumsy and awkward. However, robots come in all sizes nowadays -- and they're getting smaller while still being able to do some tough jobs. Bots aren't just vacuuming our floors. They'll soon do a lot more tasks autonomously and replace a lot of physical labor. Here are just a few examples of robots pulling (sometimes more than) their weight.- There's a European robot project, Autonomous Vehicle Emergency Recovery Tool (AVERT), designing robots that can maneuver under a parked car, lift it up and move it someplace else by remote control. These robots only lift a car about an inch off the ground, and they're supposed to help police and/or security teams to move suspicious cars to safer locations. But it might be nice to have autonomous bots re-park cars.... [url]
- The Muscle Suit is a wearable suit -- powered by compressed air that can help people lift heavy objects with minimal effort. It only weighs 12 pounds itself, takes less than a minute to put on, and is controlled.. by a mouthpiece. These kinds of supersuits come in several varieties, but this one is designed to be harmless to the wearer. [url]
- Tiny robots that weigh several grams can pull over a hundred times their own weight. The trick for these bots is a gecko-inspired sticky material combined with an inchworn-like movement. [url]
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Filed Under: autonomous bots, autonomous vehicle emergency recovery tool, avert, bio-inspired locomotion, biomimicry, muscle suit, robots, wearables
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Re:
but this one is designed to be harmless to the wearer.
And the others aren't?
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"But it might be nice to have autonomous bots re-park cars"
In a sci-fi setting, these bots are hacked to move nice cars out-of-sight so they can be stolen and disassembled at leisure.
...by corrupt police precincts.
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Re: Re:
The other kinds of supersuits aren't "inflatable" and are generally made of hard materials that could be harmful if you fell on them in just the wrong way by accident.
(Not that the other supersuits are specifically designed to hurt the people who wear them....)
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