BEAM robotics is a style of robotics that primarily uses simple analogue circuits, such as comparators, instead of a microprocessor in order to produce an unusually simple design. While not as flexible as microprocessor based robotics, BEAM robotics can be robust and efficient in performing the task for which it was designed.
Rectilinear locomotion or rectilinear progression is a mode of locomotion most often associated with snakes. In particular, it is associated with heavy-bodied species such as terrestrial pythons and boas; however, most snakes are capable of it. It is one of at least five forms of locomotion used by snakes, the others being lateral undulation, sidewinding, concertina movement, and slide-pushing. Unlike all other modes of snake locomotion, which include the snake bending its body, the snake flexes its body only when turning in rectilinear locomotion.
Swarm robotics is an approach to the coordination of multiple robots as a system which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. It is supposed that a desired collective behavior emerges from the interactions between the robots and interactions of robots with the environment. This approach emerged on the field of artificial swarm intelligence, as well as the biological studies of insects, ants and other fields in nature, where swarm behaviour occurs.
Robot locomotion is the collective name for the various methods that robots use to transport themselves from place to place.
An unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) is a vehicle that operates while in contact with the ground and without an onboard human presence. UGVs can be used for many applications where it may be inconvenient, dangerous, or impossible to have a human operator present. Generally, the vehicle will have a set of sensors to observe the environment, and will either autonomously make decisions about its behavior or pass the information to a human operator at a different location who will control the vehicle through teleoperation.
A mobile robot is an automatic machine that is capable of locomotion. Mobile robotics is usually considered to be a subfield of robotics and information engineering.
TerraMax is the trademark for autonomous/unmanned ground vehicle technology developed by Oshkosh Defense. Primary military uses for the technology are seen as reconnaissance missions and freight transport in high-risk areas so freeing soldiers from possible attacks, ambushes or the threat of mines and IEDs. The technology could also be used in civilian settings, such as autonomous snow clearing at airports.
RAVON is a robot being developed at the Robotics Research Lab at University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. The vehicle is used as a testbed to investigate behaviour-based strategies on motion adaptation, localization and navigation in rough outdoor terrain. The basis vehicle was produced by Robosoft.
Unmanned Surface Vehicles are boats or ships that operate on the surface of the water without a crew. USVs operate with various levels of autonomy, from simple remote control, to autonomous COLREGs compliant navigation.
Legged robots are a type of mobile robot which use articulated limbs, such as leg mechanisms, to provide locomotion. They are more versatile than wheeled robots and can traverse many different terrains, though these advantages require increased complexity and power consumption. Legged robots often imitate legged animals, such as humans or insects, in an example of biomimicry.
Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corporation is an American developer of robotics and microelectromechanical systems and related technologies. It was founded in the early 1980s when it was spun out from the University of Utah. The company specializes in creating robotic systems for military and industrial applications. Sarcos' work can be found in a wide variety of applications, ranging from the robotic pirates and dinosaurs at theme parks, to the robotic fountains in front of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, to NASA space suit testing equipment, prosthetic limbs, and MEMS sensors. Time Magazine named Sarcos’ Guardian XO full-body, powered exoskeleton one of “The 100 Best Inventions of 2020”.
In robotics and computer vision, visual odometry is the process of determining the position and orientation of a robot by analyzing the associated camera images. It has been used in a wide variety of robotic applications, such as on the Mars Exploration Rovers.
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrates fields of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, information engineering, mechatronics, electronics, bioengineering, computer engineering, control engineering, software engineering, mathematics, etc.
The Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) is part of the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. It replaced the existing Institute of Robotics, of the ETH Zurich in October 2002, when Prof. Bradley J. Nelson moved from the University of Minnesota, United States, to ETH Zurich and succeeded the Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schweitzer.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to robotics:
The Learning Applied to Ground Vehicles (LAGR) program, which ran from 2004 until 2008, had the goal of accelerating progress in autonomous, perception-based, off-road navigation in robotic unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). LAGR was funded by DARPA, a research agency of the United States Department of Defense.
Bio-inspired robotic locomotion is a fairly new subcategory of bio-inspired design. It is about learning concepts from nature and applying them to the design of real-world engineered systems. More specifically, this field is about making robots that are inspired by biological systems, including Biomimicry. Biomimicry is copying from nature while bio-inspired design is learning from nature and making a mechanism that is simpler and more effective than the system observed in nature. Biomimicry has led to the development of a different branch of robotics called soft robotics. The biological systems have been optimized for specific tasks according to their habitat. However, they are multifunctional and are not designed for only one specific functionality. Bio-inspired robotics is about studying biological systems, and looking for the mechanisms that may solve a problem in the engineering field. The designer should then try to simplify and enhance that mechanism for the specific task of interest. Bio-inspired roboticists are usually interested in biosensors, bioactuators, or biomaterials. Most of the robots have some type of locomotion system. Thus, in this article different modes of animal locomotion and few examples of the corresponding bio-inspired robots are introduced.
The Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute is a public engineering research and development institution in Durgapur, West Bengal, India. It is a constituent laboratory of the Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). This institute is the only national level research institute in the field of mechanical engineering in India.
Air-Cobot is a French research and development project of a wheeled collaborative mobile robot able to inspect aircraft during maintenance operations. This multi-partner project involves research laboratories and industry. Research around this prototype was developed in three domains: autonomous navigation, human-robot collaboration and nondestructive testing.
