Rapid Prototyping Kit Lets You Breed Roachbots At Home
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Thursday, 13 of November , 2008 at 12:25 am
Just in case you can’t find yourself a real cockroach for a pet (I know, it’s tough, the poor things are practically endangered), the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab at UC Berkeley has a robot RoACH (Robotic Autonomous Crawling Hexapod) that should make you just as happy. RoACH is the world’s smallest untethered legged robot, and it manages this by not using traditional joints or motors. The entire bot only has two degrees of freedom: thanks to a flexible polymer composite skeleton, it has legs that bend either forwards or backwards, in sets of two on one side and one on the other. By carefully controlling when the sets of legs are actuated, RoACH can move forwards or backwards or turn. Rather than motors, RoACH uses shape memory alloy wires as “muscles,” which allow it to move at up to one body length per second for nearly 10 minutes on an internal battery.
Currently in the works is a sub-$1000 “desktop factory” which will allow you to build as many Roachbots as you’d like with a 2D CAD program and the addition of a simple kit of electronic components. ROACHES FOR EVERYBODY!
[ UC Berkeley Biomimetic Millisystems Lab ]
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Category: Biorobotics
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