Cool Bat Robot

Readers of this blog know that I really like biomimetic and bio-inspired design in any field, including UAVs. If there is any domain where nature has much to teach us, it is flight. Fortunately, roboticists are on it, learning to emulate the tricks of fascinating biological flyers.

One of our local labs is having some success emulating the flight of bats. Seth Hutchinson and colleagues are reporting on “Lagrangian Modeling and Flight Control of Articulated-Winged Bat Robot” at International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Hamburg this week.

This robot system emulates the “articulated wing” seen in many species of bats, along with the easily recognized flapping propulsion. The investigators comment that bat’s flight is low powered and they maneuver in tight spaces, which are valuable features for many uses of UAVs.

Cool!

Nice work. I look forward to seeing more details on this.

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Conference Paper this week:

1. Ramezani, Alireza , Shi, Xichen, Chung, Soon-Jo, Hutchinson, Seth, “Lagrangian Modeling and Flight Control of Articulated-Winged Bat Robot” 2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Sept 28 – Oct 03, 2015, Congress Center Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

 

Robot Wednesday

Local Citizen Science: BeeBlitz

Are you doing the BeeBlitz?

Species Appropriate Feline Interface

In my longstanding Species Appropriate Interfaces series, here is a product to watch from a local team: Mousr.

From the promotional materials it is clear that these guys have a clue (quite a few clues, in fact), as well as a serious user testing panel.

This product is clearly well designed for the intended feline users, it may or may not be great for the humans.  The materials are not very specific about the app, so we’ll have to see.

One technical question:  I have to wonder how the onboard AI will deal with more than one cat in the game.  The behaviors sketched in the description seem like they will work OK if there is a pride of cats stalking the robot, but much would depend on details of the implementation and the actual processing speeds.  Another thing to look at when the product is out.

Examining the safety aspects, this looks pretty well designed, assuming there aren’t any glitches; pieces that break or fall off or whatever.  It is certainly no more dangerous than either natural behaviors or human made toys.  (It may be more dangerous for people than cats, if you step on it in the dark. I’m sure your cat is willing to take that risk.)

Finally, examining the ethics as I always do, I find this gets a strong grade.  The device is fun for the cat in the way the cat would like to have fun.  The autonomous prey logic is a nice feature, based on the real preferences of the feline users (not on some human fantasy).

The only caveats are about the potential manufacturing and end of life pollution associated with the device (not that your cat cares one tiny meow about that).  But these are no worse than many other gadgets.

In conclusion, this is an excellent example of a Species Appropriate Interface, designed with proper respect for and alignment with the interests of the non-human participants .  I look forward to seeing it in action.

PS.

Feature suggestion:  add a networked “nose cam” to the mousr, so you cat can make cool chase videos.

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See also:

1.  McGrath, Robert E., Species-appropriate computer mediated interaction, in Proceedings of the 27th international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems. 2009, ACM: Boston, MA, USA. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1520340.1520357

 

Ullmer on Tangible Visualization

On Friday I attended an interesting lecture by Professor Brygg Ullmer, LSU, about “Tangible visualization: paths toward physically-entangled interactive computational STEAM”.

This was a mostly non-technical summary of work from his career, most recently at  the Center for Computational and Technology (CCT) and the Department of Computer Science at Louisiana State University.  The Tangible Viz group design “new kinds of physical interaction devices”, with a specific aim toward visualization and understanding data and computation.  See perhaps, a recent paper,

There were many interesting points in his talk, some of which I would argue with.  In particular, his recent ideas about “setting the walls on fire” are probably a bad idea and probably won’t work well.

Things I think are problems here:

• The information on the wall is imposed top down by the “owner” of the wall.  This is unlikely to be what most of the victims users need or want on the wall.
  His example is listing all the former students, and where they got jobs illustrates this point.  Who, besides the sponsors of the program, is this information aimed at? How does it help current studies, research, or communication?
• Whatever is on the wall, it is basically a giant screen that you can’t turn off or get away from.  This amplifies the corrosive and isolating effects of screens, and I predict will make the rooms unusable for face-to-face interactions.
• This works against considerable amounts of research suggesting that access to natural light and natural scenes–windows, or at least virtual windows–are conducive to well being and creativity.  Filling all the walls with synthetic visualizations is pretty much the opposite of this.  So, one might wonder if people will be uncomfortable and less productive–and possibly avoid these displays if they can.

Anyway, these are some of my own hypotheses and potential objections to the “walls on fire” concept.

Nevertheless, tangible interactions have the potential for elegant, sensual interactions with computers and data.  And they very well might draw people together, to communicate face to face, and enjoy each others’ company.

(But please don’t fill the walls with stuff.)

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Brygg Ullmer. Entangling Space, Form, Light, Time, Computational STEAM, and Cultural Artifacts. interactions, XIX.4:32-39, 2012.  http://dl.acm.org/authorize?6716516

Congrats to Berenbaum on NMS

While we are thinking about our insect friends, let me make a quick congrats to Professor May Berenbaum, leading light of our local Insect Fear Film Festival, has been awarded the US National Medal of Science.  A nice recognition for a nice person, and, as she says, quite an elite group to join.

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum is the recipient of the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest honor for achievement and leadership in advancing the fields of science and technology.

Now I admit I have never attended any IFF, or their other hands on experiences.  I have plenty of insects in my house and garden, I don’t really need to go looking for more….

But Behenbaum has also done much important work investigating bee populations and other critical questions, which I am extremely interested in. (I routinely observe at least a dozen species of bees and bee-like insects.)

Congrats and best wishes.

[Official White House press release]

This comes not long after Professor Tami Bond was awarded a MacArthur fellowship [list of all 2014 MacA’s].  Giants walk among us today!

Even More Awesome Material Science

Yet more awesomeness out of our local materials science labs.  I’ve noted other cool stuff including bio bots and I’ve met a number of outstanding students working in this field.

This week a group of collaborators (including  are publishing cool adaptive camouflage based on octopus skins.  (The actual paper is accepted for the Proceedings of the National Academy,  but the full text isn’t published yet.  You’ll probably have to get it via a good library like I did. Or-gasp!-you could buy a copy and help support scientific publishing.)

The have created thin, flexible material that, like an octopus or cuttlefish, senses the appearance of the background and automatically changes to mimic it.  Cool!

http://static.movie-usa.glencoesoftware.com/source/10.1073/580/e16d038c698e11f7c88282aec91570adffd6c02b/pnas.1410494111.sm04.wmv

 

As the paper makes clear, this result is an integration of a number of technologies organized as layers, including “ultrathin sheets of monocrystalline silicon in arrays of components for controlled, local Joule heating, photode- tection, and two levels of matrix addressing, combined with metallic diffuse reflectors and simple thermochromic materials, all on soft, flexible substrates.”  (Full disclosure:  I have only the vaguest understanding of these technologies, I am quoting the paper.)

This is also yet another example of biomimetic design, using naturally evolved biological systems as a model for engineering.  Notably, the team includes a biology lab (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute), bringing to bear deep understanding of natural systems.

The demo is cool, but as I would expect from this lab, the work is extremely well done, and foundational for “materials science and engineering design that address key challenges in distributed sensing, actuation, and control in adaptive camouflage.”

Lot’s of buzz in the highbrow media, I liked the BBC’s coverage, which does a good job of sketching implications and potential uses (not just camouflage, for sure).

Nice job, all.

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Cunjiang Yu, Yuhang Li, Xun Zhang, Xian Huang, Viktor Malyarchuk, Shuodao Wang, Yan Shi, Li Gao, Yewang Su, Yihui Zhang, Hangxun Xu, Roger T. Hanlon, Yonggang Huang, and John A. Rogers, Adaptive optoelectronic camouflage systems with designs inspired by cephalopod skins. PNAS 2014 : 1410494111v1-201410494. ,    2014.

Local Start Up: You’ll Be Hearing About It

A cool local start up is generating some buzz, and I’ll join the cheering for these grads of my alum.

‘Miss Possible‘ is a line of dolls designed to inspire girls, especially toward science and engineering.  The first product is Marie Curie, the absolute avatar of a female scientist. This being the 21st century, there is an app and some games connected to the dolls.

Obviously this a good idea, and it looks like these young grads have their act together.  This could be a great thing.

Still a small operation, it is getting notice beyond our little town.

Earlier this summer I walked through the Colab Urbana with its founder Matt Cho and the folks at Norden Design.  At that time I learned that Miss Possible would be setting up shop there this month.  Cool!

I haven’t met the Miss Possible crew, but I hope to pretty soon now.

By the way, I’d love to see some Augmented Reality worked into something like this product.  I have lot’s of ideas, including living t-shirt art, 3D pop up materials (up to life size), and virtual science experiments.

Great work, and it’s great to see this startup in my home town.

CAP Report on Native Mascots

The Center for American Progress released a report discussing the damaging impact of Native Mascots, particularly on kids.  For me, the most horrifying thing in the report (and there are certainly revolting anecdotes) is the cover, which features, yes, Chief Illiniwek.

Sigh.  We struggled for 20 years to get rid of the Chief, and neither friends nor foes will let it rest.  How long, oh, how long do we have to suffer this indignity.

Unfortunately, the report is all too accurate.  I wish I could complain that they are overstating the problem, or ideologically distorting the issue.  But the situation is as bad as they say.

In the case of Illinois, the “chief is forever” crowd is not only growing, they are actively and deliberately racist, abusive, and threatening.  Boy, that sure makes me want to get the Chief back.

Enough already.  It’s just embarrassing to even be arguing about this.  Let’s create some new traditions.

NPR Reports On Cornfield

NPR reported this week on a local landmark, the Morrow Plots.

“Paying A Visit To The University Of Illinois’ Unusual Campus Landmark“

Fresh image, taken today (15 July 2014):

Cool Illinois Project: Tiny Robots, Muscle Powered

Interesting stuff happening at the U. of Illinois:  “Muscle-powered bio-bots walk on command“.

Yet more awesome technology out of Bioengineering, this one from Prof. Bashir’s lab.

This work is improving the control on the system, to make it much more useful.

See the paper for details (reference below).

I note that the fabrication uses a form of 3D printing, to fabricate the structure of “hydrogel” (which I know nothing about myself).

Really cool.  Well done, all!

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Reference

C. Cvetkovic*, R. Raman*, V. Chan, B. J. Williams, M. Tolish, P. Bajaj, M. L. Sakar, H. H. Asada, M. T. A. Saif, R. Bashir, “Three-dimensionally printed biological machines powered by skeletal muscle” PNAS, 2014. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1401577111. – (download PDF)