Nanowerk October 8, 2024 Despite recent advances in the field of small-scale robots, the development of efficient, untethered, and integrated powering, actuation, and control of small-scale robots remains a challenge due to the out-of-equilibrium and dissipative nature of the driving physical and chemical phenomena. An international team of researchers (USA – University of Michigan, Canada) designed small-scale, bioinspired aquatic locomotors with programmable deterministic trajectories that integrated self-propelled chemical motors and photoresponsive shape-morphing structures. They developed robots integrating structural protein networks that self-regulated the release of chemical fuel with photochemical liquid crystal network (LCN) actuators that changed their shape and deformed […]
Tag Archives: Autonomous robots
New method could allow multi-robot teams to autonomously and reliably explore other planets
Phys.org June 9, 2024 Researchers in the UK proposed a novel methodology for trustworthy autonomous multi-robot teams which incorporates data from multiple sources (HiRISE orbiter imaging, probability distribution maps, and on-board rover sensors) to find efficient exploration routes in Jezero crater. A map was generated, consisting of a 3D terrain model, traversability analysis, and probability distribution map of points of scientific interest. A three-stage mission planner generated an efficient route, which maximized the accumulated probability of identifying points of interest. A 4D RRT* algorithm was used to determine smooth, flat paths, and prioritized planning was used to coordinate a safe […]
Allowing robots to explore on their own
Science Daily July 21, 2023 Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University has proposed dual-resolution scheme to achieve time-efficient autonomous exploration with one or many robots using a high-resolution local map of the robot’s immediate vicinity and a low-resolution global map of the remaining areas of the environment. The high-resolution bounded local map ensures that the robots observe the entire region in detail and the computation burden is bounded. The low-resolution global map directs the robot to explore the broad space and only requires lightweight computation and low bandwidth to communicate among the robots. Their paper shows the strength of this approach […]