Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Uncle Sam - The snake robot...!!!

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Nature is the finest designer. Just see around you, you are surrounded by countless amazing creations of the nature.Leave other things, look at yourself you are a masterpiece....!! Scientists and researchers are just trying to understand what nature has done and are attempting to duplicate it. Yes.. and that's Robotics....! Nature is the inspiration for building robots.Well.. we may be billions of years behind the nature.....but we should not forget we are approaching that excellence very fast.
Scientists have already created so many intelligent robots... you can check out my older posts on robots....

Now the Biorobotics Laboratory at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have got inspired another one of the creations by nature, the snake...!! They have been successful in building such an awesome robot and its named Uncle Sam.

The movements of 'Uncle Sam' are biomimetic. It can mimic the movements of a real snake
including side-winding, wiggling and rolling.To our amazement, it can also wrap itself around a tree trunk and climb vertically up the outside of the tree.Uncle Sam is built using modular segments containing actuators and sensors, and the head segment is fitted with a camera.

There are some advantages to the robot being modular...
  • allows the snake robot the potential to be self-assembled in the field.
  • easy to repair of the robot if sections are damaged
  • robot’s length can be adjusted easily as needed.
According to the Biorobotics lab, Uncle Sam is still need to be improved.There are a lot of work to do on the robot such as...
  • Uncle Sam was designed for a specific trunk diameter and a specific tree.So they are trying to give Uncle Sam the ability to climb any try with any diameter.
  • power supply for the robot, since at the moment it must be tethered to the power supply.
No discovery or invention is complete without its applications.... So Uncle Sam is not useless...
  • locating survivors in collapsed buildings after earthquakes or other natural disasters
  • for inspecting bridges, mines, and any spaces too tight for humans
  • disarming bombs
See these videos I uploaded..... I bet you will be left with your jaw dropped at the end...!!





For more info please visit....HERE

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