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ICYMI: Goat-inspired robot design and apple picking
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: A researcher at Carnegie Mellon created the GOAT leg for robots that moves much like a pogo-stick and posted a video of its tests to YouTube. Meanwhile a robot to harvest apples might still be in prototype, but it's miles more advanced than the thing that just shakes trees violently until all the apples fall off. The mechanized sushi chef video can be found here, the boy who swallowed a dog toy here, and Joe Biden not being able to let go is here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Oki's robot chair heralds a new age of robot-aided seating
The chair is a tool of extreme simplicity and antiquity, and many would argue that it's foolish to mess with something that obviously attained perfection with the advent of air conditioned seat cushions. Of course, those people have never seen Leopard, the high-tech "concept chair" that takes technology originally developed for Oki's Robot Leg (an entire robot with design principles based on the human leg) and places it under your posterior for "seating comfort akin to being held in someone's arms." This is a chair that adjusts itself to your back, cradles your bum, and gives you a helpful little boost when it's time to stand up. Sound wasteful? Extravagant? How about totally awesome? Hit the read link for more details, and feel free to check out the fun little picture of the Robot Leg after the break.
New robot leg design becomes more human, more deadly
Your regular, inefficient robot legs getting you down? Maybe you should check in with researcher Jonathan Hurst and his robo-leg project under development at Oregon State University. Apparently most jointed legs driven by motors have a tough time recycling energy due to a lack of snapback from proper tendons, but Hurst's work hopes to clear all that noise up. By utilizing a new design powered by steel cable tendons with built-in springs, roboticists want to get closer to the 40 percent retention of energy our fancy human legs get up to. While a student at CMU, Hurst created "Thumper," a single leg attached to a boom that puts his theories in motion, and he's collaborated on bi-pedal models more recently. The hope is to eventually create robots with more natural, animal-like gaits, which will allow them to run towards or chase their human victims and terminate them with a more ruthless intensity. Check the video after the break to see exactly what we mean.[Via Medgadget]
