At the Tufts University in Massachusetts, researchers are taking some cues from caterpillars for a new mode of locomotion. When startled, caterpillars curl up and fling themselves in a motion called ballistic rolling. The result is a fast moving, but unpredictable, transportation method for the insect, compared to its other slow means of getting around. The researchers set out to mimic this reflex.
The team constructed a soft-bodies, segmented, bot called "GoQBot." Constructed with a similar framework to its living counterpart, the GoQBot demonstrated that it can indeed perform a ballistic roll. The bot was fitted with 5 infrared detectors down its side to use with a high speed 3D tracking camera to model what is actually happening in few microseconds of movement. The researchers copy the caterpillars "nonlinear muscle coupling" in the 10cm long GoQBot, and in 100ms it can take off. Traveling at 0.6m/s, and 300rpm, it can traverse ~25cm every roll, or 125cm/s.
Once the other way of locomotion is re-produced, the legs/body, the GoQBot will become a rather versatile robot. Talking up the serviceability of the GoQBot, lead author, Huai-Ti Lin, from Tuft University said, "Due to the increased speed and range, limbless crawling robots with ballistic rolling capability could be deployed more generally at a disaster site such as a tsunami aftermath. The robot can wheel to a debris field and wiggle into the danger for us."
More control of the ballistic rolling is needed to make it practical and truly useable. In a state of emergency, like Huai-Ti Lin suggested, an unpredictable final destination of the bot would be gambling with the crisis.
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