Soft robots preview videos come online!!

Happy New Year!!
Finally, my robot videos are here, on the last day of the year 2009!

After searching around for a host server, I decided that the good old YouTube was still the best so far. My last post was some preliminary tests on video linking. Now let's check out some preview videos of my soft-bodied caterpillar robots!!

First off, the InchBot I-III are the early versions of the my soft robot implementation, dated back to March 2009. It's a process by which I developed inching gaits and learned about frictional control. My colleague Chris successfully modeled these Early InchBots in a finite element environment as well. He really spiced up the video, too.

Then, here come the InchBot IV-VII which twitch, inch, burrow, and climb with much smaller body size. Chris also implemented the InchBot-V in FEA. These soft robots featured open-loop robust inching/crawling/climbing gaits.

Finally, the newest class of caterpillar soft robots, GoQBot, have an escape ballistic rolling behavioral inspired by the caterpillar of Pleuroptya ruralis (mother-of-pearl moth). This class of robots can initiate a rolling behavior within 300ms and hit top speed over 15cm/s. In addition, the updated versions have include almost all the previous InchBot series capabilities and are radio controlled fully untethered. Simple intelligence is implemented into the body structures and active sensing will be next. To hear more, stay tuned to my publications coming soon.