Boston Dynamic’s been keeping dog lovers happy throughout their steady development of BigDog, a robot with uncannily canine gait and maneuvers. Now, feline aficionados can finally rejoice as WildCat makes its way into the robot world.

However this is not the the first time that Boston Dynamics has taken a crack at cat-like bots — WildCat’s predecessor is the Cheetah bot which boasted a running speed of 45 km/hour. While this machine’s no slow poke, it can currently only run at about 26 km/hour but its truly biomimetic design should have it up to speed with real-world wild cats in the near future.

As part of US’ Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program, robots like WildCat are being developed to increase the efficacy of military operations across a great range of missions.

And even though cats and dogs don’t normally get along in the real-world, humans may choose to have their robot counterparts working together. Machines like BigDog could be charged with the task of carrying heavy loads over long periods time, while ones like the WildCat might be used when there’s a need to maneuver with speed and agility.

But let’s not forget androids! If you were fascinated by Boston Dynamic’s PETMAN, it’s high time you check out its upgraded version Atlas. It may look a little scary in the video below but researchers are confident that bots like these might be able to help humans out in life-threatening situations.

The robots being built around the world seem to be as diverse as the cultures they come from. While some have been engineered solely for people’s practical needs, others have been made to appeal to and keep the company of humans.

While it’s clear that cultural environments affect the way people build machines, could religion really be the key factor? This is a question that scholars and robot-lovers alike have been pondering for years. Many have focused on the huge differences in the way that two major robotics power houses have been producing machines: USA and Japan.

So how could the prominent religious beliefs of these two nations be affecting the way they’re making their robots? Though many people in Japan consider themselves non-religious, Shinto and Buddhism remain prominent institutions. Within these religions, the natural world is worshiped and humans hold a glorified position within it. The term Kami refers to the Shinto notion that our natural world is filled with sacred entities. Because humans are considered to be divine, so are the things we create. From this perspective, it only makes sense to create machines which could be natural companions to humans; hence the Japanese fascination with robots that are life-like, cute and cuddly, and made to accompany and care for people.

As a predominantly Christian nation, it’s been suggested that — from a religious perspective — development of robotics in the US has been centered on purpose and salvation. In David E. Nye’s  2004 book, America as Second Creation: Technology and Narratives of New Beginnings, he makes the case that modern-day AI researchers seek a heavenly kingdom within virtual reality much the way early American settlers sought to create a second Eden on the continent. Similarly, the American/European eagerness to create a super-computer as intelligent as the human brain is conducive to the Christian concept of  immortalized human souls in resurrected bodies stripped of their earthly nature. Following Christian ideology, if robots could be a form of such resurrected bodies, they should certainly not take on overly-human characteristics, as this would be an obscene imitation of god’s creation.

So from a religious standpoint it may seem that robots in Christian cultures should be intelligent and useful while robots in Buddhist/Shinto cultures aught to be enchanting and realistic. But enough about religion affecting the development of robots, could robots themselves ever become religious? Surprisingly enough, the issue has been explored by several researchers including Edmund Furse, David Levy, Anne Foerst, and Robert Geraci. The theme has also been satirically portrayed in the Futurama episode ” Hell Is Other Robots.”

Pictured next to an American coin, this little machine weighs in at a mere tenth of a gram. The Robobee, developed at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering,  is officially the smallest flying robot ever created and it’s just completed some very successful first flights.

It’s no surprise the Robobee was inspired by insects. Bees, for example, are incredibly elegant creatures, capable of buzzing from flower to flower effortlessly and hovering stably while pollinating them. In their sophistication and complex social structure, bees are in fact a perfect prototype for the development of biomimetic machines however, the common fly can do the trick too! In fact, Robobee’s locomotive properties are inspired by the pesky bugs we see flying around trash.

However lowly the little garbage lovers may seem, they’ve actually got some incredible qualities that scientists want a piece of. They’re quick, energy efficient, and their paper-thin wings are capable of getting them wherever they need to go.

While the Robobee is very impressive, living flies remain a few steps ahead. The wire connected to Robobee provides it with the energy it needs to operate since a battery small and light enough to embed in the bot has yet to be created.

According to the researchers who created the carbon-fiber critter, Robobee may soon be able to assists in areas such as: search and rescue in the case of natural disaster, hazardous environment exploration, and high resolution weather and climate mapping. By the sounds of it, this little bot will be busy as a ….

For more information about Robobee you can access the full paper HERE

The DRC won’t be all fun and games- its primary aim will be to foster the development machines fit to lend a hand to victims of natural or man-made diasters, executing risky tasks such as evacuation operations. DARPA notes that participants of the DRC should specifically focus on creating ground robots that are able to make use of human tools commonly applied in disaster relief situations.

Two of the four competition tracks are still open for registration. Check out the official website for more information HERE if you think your team may have what it takes!

Electro sensors inspired by fish who navigate their way through murky waters, robots that dance with the honeybees, and artificial muscles and blood vessels making their way into modern medicine. These are just a few of the research topics that were discussed at this year’s Living Machines Conference that took place from 9th to the 12th of July in Barcelona, Spain.

Chairs of the session  Paul Verschure, from Pompeu Fabra University and Tony Prescott from the University of Sheffield, welcomed delegates to one of Barcelona’s architectural gems; Antoni Gaudí’s La Pedrera building.

During 4 consecutive days, leading scientists in the fields of Biomimetics and Biohybryd systems gathered for pre-conference workshops, lectures, poster sessions, exhibitions and open panel sessions to present their work and discuss issues related to the development of real-word technologies inspired by biological systems.

The first day finished off with a panel-lead discussion centred on the question: why study nature? Co-chair Tony Prescott got dialogue flowing by providing two general reasons: to build technologies that could be useful in solving current challenges, and to better understand nature itself.  While the speakers and audience engaged in the discussion agreed that these are likely the main motives, other interesting opinions surged through out the conversation.

According to Barry Trimmer who specializes in Neurobiology at the University of Tufts,  by attempting to understand nature’s complexity, a biomimetic approach may allow us to bypass the limits of human creativity.

Toshio Fukuda who specializes in Micro-Nano Systems Engineering at Nagoya University is often inspired by particular functions or geometric shapes found in nature to help make devices such as the artificial blood vessels he works on more efficient.

Conversely, as a mechanical engineer specialized in aerodynamics, David Lentink  is not so much interested in biomimetics as an outfit for a design, but rather in specific principles which might make sense from an engineering point of view ¨ We don’t want to look at the final detail of a bird wing to make an aircraft because it’s simply too complex, but some of the principles are extremely useful and they allow scientists to really think outside the box.¨

While a biomimetic approach often involves studying some of the most puzzling aspects of nature scientists have yet to wrap their heads around, there are still many things nature can’t do. ¨ Biological systems satisfy many constraints at one time so they may not be optimal for any one function that we may want to imitate. Flight is a great example because we can do things by optimizing that birds just can’t do and we can exceed the capabilities of birds with jets and planes that we build,¨explained Frank Grasso, director of the Biomimetic and Cognitive Robotics lab at Brooklyn College, New York.

However, Dieter Braun, who specializes in Systems Biophysics at Ludwig Maximilians University, pointed out that it’s really a two-way learning stream and just because ¨evolution did not invent the bicycle¨ nature still has plenty of tricks to teach us and we need not be afraid of its complexity.

Check back to find out more on what what was shared during the 2012 Living Machines Conference; proceedings from the conference will be published in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNAI/LNCS).

The  HRP-4C Humanoid  robot was developed by The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) of Japan and Kawada Industries. As you can see above, this robot can put on quite the show! Created mainly for entertainment purposes, this robot has even hit fashion runways! Actroid- DER3, developed by Osaka University and the robotics company Kokoro, is also being used for similar purposes.

Another pretty face below- the mask bot which uses a simple projection of a real human face to achieve its life-like appearance, was developed by AIST and  the Institute of Cognitive Systems (ICS) at the Technische University in Munich .

Some humanoids can even play music! Check out a robot released by Toyota back in  2007 that can play the violin.

A joint project between the MIT Media Lab and Drexel University put on this performance using 4 HUBO robots which were developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

Many robots are developed for use as research platforms. Nao, developed by Aldebaran is currently being used in all sorts of research at elementary schools, hospitals and universities around the world.

MIT Media Lab’s Nexi is giving researchers insight into human-robot interaction. While it couldn’t pass for a human, the robot does manage to display rather convincing facial expressions.

CB2 is another robot developed by Osaka University. Similarly to the iCub (developed by the European RobotCub consortium), it expresses child-like behaviours and learning abilities to help researchers study human cognitive development.

Of course there are plenty more humanoids out there! What’s your favourite android?

Humans may not have the fastest or strongest bodies on earth but they are super multifunctional. Sure, we can’t jump as high as frogs, or swim as well as dolphins but we’re still able to achieve both forms of motion. The versatility of our physical ability has inspired us to create a world filled with tools and structures that would be impossible for many other animals to use – can you picture a cat using a door handle or a fish using stairs?

When industrial robots first came into the picture several decades ago, they were mainly used to accomplish very specific tasks and so their designs were purely functional. Today, there’s a big interest in developing robots for broader purposes including using them as research tools to further understand ourselves.

Some of today’s humanoid robots may seem a little bit creepy but sometimes it does make sense to give robots human-like bodies so they’re apt to operate amongst our human-centred designs. Many robots used for research need human bodies too, because researchers interested in studying human cognition know that while we need our brains to interact with our bodies, we also need our bodies in order to interact with the world.

So what does it really take to be a humanoid robot? Well, it should be able to move on two legs, use hands similarly to the way we do and perceive their own state and the state of the environment around them. They should also be able to communicate through modalities like speech or facial expression. Furthermore, they should be able to learn from and adapt to the environment around them.

This month, DARPA (the US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) announced a new robotics challenge: While they maintain that it’s not imperative that the robot take on a humanoid form, the robot must be compatible with human operators, environments and tools. Robots in the running will compete with each other in a sort of obstacle course that will pose 8 real-world disaster site challenges. Among the tasks are: climbing a ladder, driving a utility vehicle and removing debris blocking an entry way. Proposals are due by May 31st, 2012.

The video above features Boston dynamic’s PETMAN who may already be capable of performing some of those tasks. While it seems like a bot that could get some serious work done, there are other humanoids that are a little easier on the eyes! Check out a video of Honda’s latest version of their Asimo robot below. If you want to check out something that’s a little bit different check out iiee spectrum’s compilation of robot babies and for more ideas on future robots, check out the European initiative: Robot Companions for Citizens.

Since this bot feeds off water’s natural elements, it’s never in need of any refueling. Likewise, water is all it releases back into the environment so it gets itself around in an environmentally friendly fashion!

Research for the development of Robojelly was funded by the USA’s Office of Naval Research which is particularly interested in the robot’s ability to monitor the seas however, researchers suggest it could also be used to measure levels of pollutants in large bodies of water.

The combination of new materials and creative engineering are paving the way for all sorts of green energy solutions. Click HERE to check out a European initiative which believes in the importance of creating helpful machines in a sustainable way.

We all know that the fastest land animal is the cheetah, capable of running up to 120 km/hr in short bursts- but has it met its match in robot form? In terms of speed, the great cat faces little competition. Nevertheless, today, no legged robot is speedier than Darpas’s new Cheetah bot which can run 30 km/hr in cheetah-like fashion.

As its name suggests, the robot’s movements imitate those of fast-running animals in nature. Just as cheetahs do, the robot accelerates and increases its stride by flexing and un-flexing its back on each step. Currently, this cheetah bot’s still stuck on a treadmill in the lab, however, testing of a free-running prototype is planned for later this year.

Cheetah has been developed under Darpa’s Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (MP3) Program. Instead of being focused on a specific military mission, this program generally aims to improve the scientific framework for the design and fabrication of robot systems, through new engineering approaches.You may also want to check out the European flagship initiative:Robot Companions for Citizens which also aims to develop innovative research lines of research within robotics.

If you’re a fan of animal-inspired bots, check out a  seagull, penguin, and jellyfish from German robotics company Festo and for more information on innovative robotics research in Europe check out the FET Flagship initiative: Robot Companions for Citizens.

Militaries around the world view physical exhaustion of their soldiers as one of their main challenges, since soldiers often have to carry loads of up 50kg on their backs through rough, volatile terrain. So why not ease the load with the help of a four-legged robot?
We’ve mentioned this project in a previous post but now, in collaboration with Boston Dynamics, The Us’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agengy (DARPA) has given us a peek at the latest version of AlphaDog, also known as the Legged Squad Support System (LS3).

The LS3 did well in prior lab tests but now it’s been let out to play in the open air.  Previous models of the  robot were already able to overcome unexpected obstacles and carry a heavy load but perhaps the most impressive feature in the newest model is that the robot can now respond to certain commands, much like its live furry counterparts. It can also be “trained” to follow a particular person and it has sensors that allow it to distinguish between different objects such as trees and rocks. Being able to detect these obstacles, it can also make autonomous corrections in order to avoid them and continue on its path. This summer Alphadog’s expected to be tested on a course of over 40km while carrying a load of about 200 kg. Do you think it’s up for the challenge?

Alphadog is being developed for military purposes, but it’s not hard to envision other distinct applications for a biomimetic bot such as this one. This type of robot could be useful in a wide range of  situations that are often physically taxing for humans: search and rescue missions, space and deep sea exploration and assistance in natural disaster relief. This canine copycat is designed for land use, however other biomimetic bots are being created for both avian and aquatic applications. If you’re interested in the notion of combining nature’s age old principles with today’s cutting edge technology, you may want to check out the the European initiative, robot companions for citizens.