Dexmo transfers your hand movements to the digital world.

Kickstarter over the years has harbored and successfully brought more ideas into the commercial industry unlike anything else. The Virtual reality head mounted display Oculus Rift is a good example that proves the point. Oculas Rift started of as a $2.4 million project on kickstarter in 2012 and now its a company worth $2 Billion.

But we are not talking about Kickstarter or Oculas Rift here, we are talking about another revolutionary idea in the Virtual reality scene, called the 'Dexmo'.

Dexmo is a hand wearable exoskeleton that input your hand movements into the digital world and outputs force feed back to your finger so you feel the object in the digital world.

Dexmo is a project developed by Dexta Robotics, a robotics start-up based in Shenzhen, China.

Well the technology is not something very new. We have had countless university and academic projects that are quite similar to this. However what sets this itself apart is the fact that its going to be affordable to buy and cheaper to build. Its designed for mass production, its not just a prototype its developed on principle of DFM (Designed-for-manufacturing).

Virginia Tech's Robotic Jelly Fish: Another way to spy

In the past few years the US armed forces and other US Government agencies have been spending a lot of their funds on funding and allotting their projects to Universities and technical  institutes across the United States. Most recent projects are robotic projects that mimic animals and can be used for potential surveillance and assistance to the armed forces both on and off the battlefield.

Here is another awesome potential spying/surveillance robot being developed by the Graduate students of Virginia Tech College of Engineering. This time its a Jelly Fish and its called 'Cryo'.

Click to see enlarged view

Cryo is basically a prototype robot that looks very much like a giant jelly fish. Its 5.7 feet wide (1.7 meters) and weighs in at 170 lbs (77kg) and its designed to be neutrally buoyant. The inspiration for the design is the 'Lion's mane jellyfish' also termed the 'Cyanea capillata' by biologist, that's were the name 'Cryo' comes from.

VelociRoACH: Robotic Cockroach (hexapedal millirobot)

The Pestilent Cockroach have been here on planet earth for millions of years, and part of the reason of their evolutionary success is the shear speed at which they move. Most of the times the best engineering solution for a problem is mimicking nature, but mimicking nature obviously is very difficult. However day by day year by year we are getting closer and closer to doing that, specifically when we talk about legged robots.

Mr.Duncan Haldane and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkely), have been studying the six-legged pests to improve their millirobots. The 'VelociRoACH' as its called is the fastest legged robot in the world at the scale, however the fastest legged robot title stays with the LS3 from Boston dynamics (The Cheetah Robot).

Taking about specifications and technical details. The VelociRoACH can move with a velocity of 2.7 m/s actually making it faster than a real cockroach which do a maximum 1.5 m/s.

The secret of the the velocity of the VelociroACH is in the shape of its legs. Shaped like a 'C' they provide the spring action need to propel the robot really fast and at the same time absorbing the impact of the legs hitting the ground almost 15 times a second. The legs are similar to that of the R-Hex from Bostan Dynamics but don't work in the same way. Its body has been fabricated out of a good type of cardboard. Although it can lift 4 times its own weight. It weighs a mere 30 grams and is 10 cm long. To keep it stable, it must have 3 of the six legs making contact with the ground all time.

Hexacopter and hexapod union looks like a robotic insect

Hexacopter and Hexapod are amongst  the latest and the most popular remote control robotic toys out there. How about combining them together to create a new walking and flying-walking hybrid machine. I bet you never though of that before. That's what the guys at Mad Lab Industries (MLI for short) have come up with. MLI is a  fresh start up that sells robotic components online and on the side they do cool stuff too.

So the basic idea behind this unnamed project is to integrate a remote controlled Hexapod Robot with a remote controlled Hexacopter. With this idea, they received a PhantomX AX Hexapod kit from Trossen Robotics.

The PhantomX AX Hexapod

Now the integration wasn't an easy task, considering the fact that the PhantomX was originally designed to be tough and was quite heavy to be  taken to the air. So it had to undergo a lot of surgery, the frame originally made of ABS plastic parts had to be replaced with lighter carbon fiber parts. Despite the fact, it was still heavy for it to be taken in the air by a quadcopter. Rather it needed a Hexacopter which has a much greater lifting force and was much stable than a quadcopter. A quadcoptor would have been cheaper considering the fact that it would have reduced the cost of 2 BLDC motors and ESC (Electronic Speed Controller).

DARPA's Cheetah Robot and the LS3 taking quadruped robot tech to new highs

DARPA in collaboration with Boston Dynamics has been brewing up some really awesome legged robot technology over the past few years. The various legged robot projects have been under constant update and improvement over the years. The list of the state of the art legged robots from Boston Dynamics includes the The Big Dog, Cheetah, Petman and the latest of the pack, the LS3. Each robots have been designed for a own unique purpose and have significant differences.

The latest updates however are from the Cheetah and the LS3.

The Cheetah

The Cheetah has been under development since 1989 under MIT and later under Boston Dynamics. It has been developed and funded under DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program. A recent video update on YouTube shows The Cheetah running at 28.3 mph (45.5 km/h), breaking it previous record of 27.78 mph (44.7 km/h) which it achieved back in 2009. This makes it 0.5 mph faster than Usain Bolt.

Now that being said, The Cheetah has a lot of advantages over Usain Bolt, It runs on a high speed treadmill; plus, it is powered by an off board hydraulic pump and uses a boom-like device to keep it running in the center of the treadmill. Overall, significant improvements for the speeds have been made in the algorithms and a more powerful pump have been added. Although Boston Dynamics plans to test a free running Cheetah in the open environment by next year.

Not much details about the technology have been made public.

A Robot that never loses a Stone, Paper, Scissor game

The Japanese always come up with some really amazing robotic technology. A robotic hand developed by the University of Tokyo's Ishikawa Oku Lab is so good at the game of stone, paper, scissor or Jaken as the Japanese call it, that no human can ever beat the robot, its undefeatable.

The reason no human can't beat it is cause its a robot!,  little stupid humour there. Obvioulsy its a machine that's designed for the purpose.The working is pretty simple to explain, it has what the researcher call the 'high-speed vision'. This lets the robot detect the movement of the hand and recognise the move being made by the human opponent with in 1 millisecond.

The 7th All Japan Robot American Football Tournament (Video)

I came across this really cool and unique robotic sport that's becoming popular in Japan, 'The All Japan Robotic American Football'. 

In this game 5 robots from each team compete with one another to get the ball across the opponents line. These robots are Radio controlled with limited autonomous abilities. Just like in an American Football (Rugby) match the robots dash and wrestle against each other to get to the ball. These robots have dimension and size limitations. Dimensions should not exceed 20cm width, 20cm depth, and it should fit within a rectangular framework of 20cm in height.

A robotic arm totally made out of Legos

As kids most of us have had our hands on some or the other sort of Lego kits. Although if you haven't been keeping up, Lego kits have come a long way. With the 'Lego Mindstorms' series you can almost build anything out of it, all you need is imagination and the right skill to assemble the parts.

A guy named Max Shepherd uploaded a video on YouTube titled 'Lego Robotic Arm' where he demonstrates his creation of what he calls a 'Lego Prosthetic Arm'. Similar to what the title claims the arm has a striking resemblance to the movements of a human arm. It has 12 degrees of freedom (DOF), just for your information, a normal human arm is said to have 7 DOF. The arms incorporates lego pneumatic cylinders. Although the movements are pretty slow but are fair enough to look human like. It can lift a couple ponds of weight and pour a drink for you.

The thing that sets this robotic human arms different from the others is; anyone can actually build one with the lego parts that have been used. Unfortunately Max Shepherd hasn't reveled a lot of details online except for the video and a little description, but anyways his work is really worth appreciating.

Boston Dynamics with its new toy: The PETMAN bipedal robot

Boston Dynamics is a company know for its crazy legged robots which really resemble real life movements. Its one of the leading company in the development of advance robots with remarkable mobility, agility, dexterity and speed. After releasing the video of Alpha Dog back in September, Boston dynamics released a new video demonstrating a robot that resembles an adult human in terms a lot of physical movements.

Android in Space: Nexus S on Space Shuttle Atlantis

The Android OS has brought about a big revolution as to how Smart-phones are used. With the kind of  hardware modern smart-phones come with, they can do a lot more then just being a camera, media player and a phone, they can be used as brains for little robots.

Google first sent Google Nexus S at the edge of the atmosphere back in December 2010 via weather balloons. This past week Google posted a video showcasing how the Nexus S is being used by NASA to power its SPHERE satellites (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites).  These Sphere Satellites are free floating devices that NASA says were actually inspired by the 'Light Saber' droid from the popular Star Wars series and were developed by MIT. SPHERE Satellite is a self contained system with power, propulsion, computing and navigation equipment.

MABEL: The fastest two-legged robot (Biped)

Its always a dream for humanoid robot builders to replicate human running style. Although legged running robots have been built in the past, most of them don't have knees. The one's with knees can't run very fast; A good example is the Honda Asimo which has knees but it can only walk steadily and run upto 6 Km/hr, although I would like to say its one of the best humanoids ever built.

A robot developed at the University of Michigan lab can run like a human with features that represents the height, agility and efficiency of humans for a two-legged machine. With a peak pace of 6.8 miles per hour or 10.94Km/hr, MABEL is believed to be the world's fastest bipedal robot with knees. 

Mabel was a project that was built back in 2008 with collaborating members which include Jonathan Hurst, a doctoral student at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University,  Jessy Grizzle a professor at U-Mich. Doctoral students, Koushil Sreenath who is in the U-M Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Hae-Won Park is in the U-M Department of Mechanical Engineering the later have contributed to developing the Algorithm and model for the robot. Since then the team has been progressively improving the feedback algorithms that enables the robot to keep its balance while reacting to its environment in real time.

Cyclocopter Aircraft: Another way to hover and fly.

The human dream of flying has a long history, the aircraft designs we see today are the outcome of all the sacrifice and hardwork of a long list of inventors. On the contrary some designs never made it in the real world because of their complexities and lack of resources. One such aircraft design is the Cyclocopter also called a Cyclogyro. The original idea is know to be almost a century old. Basically, a cyclocopter is similar to a helicopter, it creates lift by means of rapidly moving airfoils. But unlike a helicopter, a cyclocopter's airfoils rotate about a horizontal axis, they continually changing their pitch in order to generate thrust in one single direction.

The idea is not as simple as it sounds and that's the reason no aircraft based on this system made it into real world applications. But that might change for good, a team of researchers at the University of Maryland from the Department of Aerospace Engineering have been working on this concept since 2008. It is a radically alternate concept to conventional helicopters. It can revolutionize vertical flight especially in the field of robotic Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) which have a wide range of military and civilian applications.

Hemispherical Gimbaled Wheel Drive System (HOG Wheel)

Sometimes the simplest of designs can make you achieve the once considered impossible. 'Curtis Boirum', a Master student in Mechanical Engg. at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois just proved the fact. He developed a Hemispherical omnidirectional gimbaled wheel (HOG) drive system which basically is nothing hi-tech so to speak, but its pure genius.

HECTOR: Insect Inspired Hexapod Robot

Understanding nature has always been one of the inspirations for development of Robots and automated technology. When it comes to legged robots, developers are always in the process to make Robots move as elegantly as animals to unravel the secret of nature, when it comes to movements in animals. Biologists and engineers at the Bielefeld Center of Excellence 'Cognitive Interaction Technology' (CITEC) are just trying to do that. They developed the hexapod walking robot 'HECTOR' for this purpose.

RoboEarth: Internet for robots

Robots are ultimately going to be a part of daily lives in the future. To make robots do what you desire, they need to have the appropriate hardware and have to be programed so as to fulfill the need of the work.

The greatest challenge when it comes to robots is to create robots that can move around in the human world, performing tasks that are beneficial to people and perform a task to the desired satisfaction autonomously.

Although a lot of robots in todays world are autonomous but they are highly constraint to the surrounding. They rely solely on the sensor inputs and the program they have in their memory. If you put the robot in a never before situation, the robot has to plan/process a strategy all over again.

NASA set to Launch Robonaut 2 In Space For the First Time.

According to a recent announcement a couple of days ago, NASA is set to launch Robonaut 2 this month on the 24th of February aboard space shuttle Discovery along with six astronauts, tools and spare supplies to the International Space Station making it the first ever humanoid robot to travel and work in Space. For now R2 (Robonaut 2) will only have to go with the upper part of its body as the legs aren't ready yet and undergoing testing.

Robotic Samara: Single winged helicopter

Nature has always been a great inspiration when it comes to designing and developing new mechanical devices.  With the advent of the UAV age, flying machines are getting smaller in size. When it comes to hovering UAVs like mini-scaled helicopters the problem with them is the smaller they get the less efficient they become. So to solve this problem Evan Ulrich and colleagues at the University of Maryland in College Park turned to the biological world for inspiration. Many trees disperse their seeds by releasing those single-winged seeds that are also called "Samara". Evan Ulrich and colleagues built a mechanical Samara also know as Ulrich flyer whose dynamics are very similar to those of nature's Samaras.

The Quadrotor project at Penn Engineering GRASP Labs

When it comes to mechanical design, we know from history that the simplest of designs turns out to be the most useful of all. That's what Quadrocopter or Quadrotors as they are called are proving once again. Quadrotors are basically flying crafts which have a cross chassis and have a motors at each of the four ends, all the electronics for control  is situated in the middle. With the option of high tech programmable circuits these days the tasks they can perform are only limited to the ability of a programmer and the sensor options available.

Athlete Robots Coming Closer To Reality?

Japanese have always been a step ahead when it come to robotics. A Japanese researcher named Ryuma Niiyama developed this robot as a PhD candidate at the Department of Mechano-Informatics of the University of Tokyo with colleagues Satoshi Nishikawa and Yasuo Kuniyoshi are in an effort to build an Athlete Robot that could sprint just like a Human Sprinter. Although there are robots out there like Asimo and other Biped robots that could walk like humans but they are quite Mechanical in nature and use motors attached to reduction gearbox. The Athlete Robot on the other hand has significant similarities to its human counterpart.