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Wow! iRobot's soft, shape-shifting robot blob can roll around and change shape, and it will be able to squeeze through tiny cracks in a wall when the project is finished.... via jwz.
iRobot's Soft Morphing Blob 'Bot Takes Its First Steps
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Oct 13, 2009 02:36 PM
Robotics |
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That's a really nasty looking robot. :O I hate how the nasty looking ones are always sponsored by the military!
The presentation with the notebook and pencil was nice. :)
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The concept sounds eerily similar to the idea of Lovecraft's Shoggoths: highly adaptable, amorphous drones which carry out construction based on commands from their masters.
That being said, I don't think this will be useful as a stand-alone robot. It would be more useful as a reconfigurable end-effector for manipulation or locomotion.
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Was Patrick prescient? Or does Irobot have some very dedicated Prisoner fans?
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The "jamming" thing is a cool idea for an actuator I'd never heard of before.
However, I'm pretty sure you could make a soccer-ball robot made out of selectively inflatable/deflatable bags roll across a desk whether there was a solid "sand" phase inside them or not. So I'm unsure about just how much the "jamming" effect they talk about really has to do with the locomotion they've achieved.
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