Life in the Fast Lane

A zany 6-legged robot with a large human-like head that’s been programmed to dance, strutted its stuff on stage to the tune of the Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega, putting a whole new meaning on doing ‘the splits’ and winning the 2008 Hexapod Championships.

Called the Hexapod-Meisterschaft, the robot was the brainchild of students from the Hagenberg Campus of the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences, an engineering and information technology school, located 12 miles (20 kilometers) northeast of the city of Linz, Austria.

The university holds the Hexapod Championships annually, and this year its students didn’t fail to entertain, as the madcap machine swung its metal joints and tapped its robotic feet to the beat.

Nature equips its creatures with legs, but technologists prefer to install mechanics such as wheels for ‘hexapod robots’ — mechanical ‘vehicles’ that walk about on 6 legs — so the robot can move quickly when the ground is flat.

Hexapod feet are typically pointed, but they can also be tipped with adhesive material to help climb walls.

Since a robot can be statically stable on 3 or more legs, a hexapod robot has a great deal of flexibility in how it can move — if legs become disabled, the robot may still be able to walk.

Not all of the robot’s legs are needed for stability. Other legs are free to reach new foot placements which is advantageous when it comes to moving securely across uneven terrain. Gaits for hexapods are typically stable, even in slightly rocky and uneven terrain.

Motion may also be non-gaited, which means the sequence of leg motions is not fixed, but rather chosen by the computer in response to the sensed environment.

Insects are chosen as models because their nervous system is simpler than other animal species. Complex behaviors can also be attributed to just a few neurons and the pathway between sensory input and motor output is relatively shorter. Insect’s walking behavior and neural architecture are used to improve robot locomotion.

Insect gaits are usually obtained by 2 means — centralized and decentralized control architectures. Centralized controllers directly specify transitions of all legs, whereas in decentralized architectures, 6 nodes (legs) are connected in a parallel network. Gaits arise by the interaction between neighboring legs.

Dancing Hexapod-Meisterschaft Robot

Source: Wikipedia

Related Stories from the Past

• Worlds First Robotic Bartender
• When Robots Invade Mother Nature
• Worlds First Flying Skycar Takes Off from London to Timbuktu
• Worlds Weirdest and Most Bizarre Perfumes
• Ancient Art of Firewalking Secrets Revealed
• Sunken Sister Ship of Titanic to be Underwater Seabed Museum
• Creepy Crawly Slithery Snake Massage the New Rage
• First Walking House in the World
• Giant Prehistoric Bird the Size of a Small Plane Discovered
• Dolphins Walk on Water in the Wild