SlothBot | The World's First Robotic Sloth That Will Survey Threatened Species.

SlothBot, a slow-moving and energy-efficient robot that can linger in the trees to monitor animals, plants, and the environment below, will be tested near the Garden’s popular Canopy Walk.

Built by robotics engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology to take advantage of the low-energy lifestyle of real sloths, SlothBot demonstrates how being slow can be ideal for certain applications. Powered by solar panels and using innovative power management technology, SlothBot moves along a cable strung between two large trees as it monitors temperature, weather, carbon dioxide levels, and other information in the Garden’s 30-acre midtown Atlanta forest. Watch on YouTube

About three feet long, SlothBot’s whimsical 3D-printed shell helps protect its motors, gearing, batteries, and sensing equipment from the weather. The robot is programmed to move only when necessary, and will locate sunlight when its batteries need recharging. At the Atlanta Botanical Garden, SlothBot will operate on a single 100-foot cable, but in larger environmental applications, it will be able to switch from cable to cable to cover more territory.

SlothBot could help scientists better understand the abiotic factors affecting critical ecosystems, providing a new tool for developing information needed to protect rare species and endangered ecosystems. SlothBot could do some of our research remotely and help researchers understand what’s happening with pollinators, interactions between plants and animals, and other phenomena that are difficult to observe otherwise.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MX-Phoenix | The tarantula-inspired robot was built by one man in his garage

Image
Norwegian engineer Kåre Halvorsen has created the MX-Phoenix, a 3D printed spider inspired hexapod robot that uses 18 different motors to crawl over uneven ground. Zenta has designed a number of hexapods and other varieties of robots over the years, including his award-winning MorpHex robots. He states his goals for this particular project: “A more dynamic gait engine and terrain adaptation. I also want a hexapod robot with a relative small body and large leg section, I’m also trying to keep the total weight as low as possible.” The robot’s tibia and body components were designed using Fusion 360 and printed on a Wanhao Duplicator i3. He then strengthened the printed ABS parts using an acetone vapor treatment. Weighing 4.76 kg (10.5 lb), the Mx-Phoenix utilizes a total of 18 Dynamixel servos from Robotis. The C++ code, which contains Zenta’s custom gait-algorithm for hexapod robots (called DynaZgait), is being run on a Teensy 3.6 MCU. The idea to design a hexapod walking robot was deve...
Read more

DRAGON | A Japanese dragon drone moves independently through the air, resembling the sinuous motion of a flying snake

Image
 The JSK Lab at the University of Tokyo has introduced a cutting-edge drone known as the "dragon drone," which is composed of multiple small drones capable of dynamic transformations. According to reports, this drone not only has the ability to alter its shape into various forms like squares or curved lines but also possesses the capability to autonomously determine the most suitable shape based on the space it needs to navigate. The acronym "DRAGON" stands for "Dual-rotor embedded multilink Robot with the Ability of multi-deGree-of-freedom aerial transformatiON." Inspired by traditional dragon kites, the design features a tail composed of interconnected smaller kites.  Watch on YouTube Each of the small drones is equipped with a pair of ducted fans that can be adjusted to direct thrust in almost any direction. Powered by an Intel Euclid dev kit and supported by a spine-mounted battery pack offering three minutes of flight time, the DRAGON drone's modu...
Read more

Google DeepMind is Using AI to Teach Robots to Play Soccer

Image
DeepMind, scientists have successfully trained low-cost humanoid robots to play 1v1 soccer. Using advanced techniques like deep reinforcement learning, the team was able to teach these robots agile skills and tactics, bringing us one step closer to having robots perform complex tasks in the real world.                                                                     Watch on YouTube The training process involved two stages, where robots first learned independent skills like getting up from the ground and scoring goals. In the second stage, these skills were combined into a single soccer-playing agent, which improved its tactics through self-play against previous versions of itself. This progress could lead to the development of advanced humanoid robots capable of performing complex tasks across various industries, su...
Read more