ROBOTIC ANIMALS: NEWEST TREND IN ROBOT TECHNOLOGY

UNEDITED SAMPLE DEV COM ARTICLE
By Julia Nina Somera Moncada
IV - Madame Marie Curie


Forget the RoboSapien™ and the RoboPet™. Today’s true robots are closer to mother nature than what has ever been done before. Left and right, new types of robots with amazing abilities pop up. All of them have the potential to have a leading role in the field of surveillance, emergency rescues and pollution reduction.

Students from the University of Washington have created a robotic fish that can swim using its mechanical fins and tail. Each one and a half foot long ‘fishbot’ is equipped with a computer, depth sensor, compass, and radio. It can swim forward, sideward and even backward. In the future, these ‘fishbots’ will be used to track underwater pollution sources, dolphins, whales, and other marine life.

Moving from fish to penguins, Korean programmers have created ‘Pomi,’ a penguin-looking robot that can display emotions. Pomi can express emotions in various ways. It displays accurate and realistic facial expressions. It has a heartbeat that can change according to its mood. It can release various scents. Also, it can speak short sentences and phrases to allow human interaction and communication.

The robotic animal trend continues with Waalbot, a wall-climbing, gecko-like structure created by Carnegie Mellon University. It has three-footed wheels which are padded with microscopic fibers like a gecko’s feet. The fibers stick to surfaces which allow it to walk across walls and even ceilings. Due to its size and maneuverability, it can potentially be used in spying or surveillance in hard-to-reach areas.

In architecture, students from the University of Technology in Sidney, Australia have been working on the Skinform project. It is a robot, which can change its form according to the needs of its environment. It is composed of 15 modular, air-filled arches, multi-layered expandable skin and complex computer programs. It can expand and contract in a fluid motion.

In the UK, hundreds of programmers and scientists are trying to create Voltron-like robots, which can connect with each other to form a bigger robot. Currently, this swarm of mini-robots can attach end-to-end to form an artificial organism capable of doing moderately difficult tasks. In the future, they will be used in locating survivors in collapsed buildings and other emergencies. Although, a fully functional version is not expected to be released until 2023.

These robots are still prototypes but they have a huge potential and may be used in very important projects and researches that will be conducted in the years to come. They also have the potential to become household items in the near future.