Tootfinder

🍆 A Hermetic, Transparent Soft Growing Vine Robot System for Pipe Inspection
#robots #machine

A Hermetic, Transparent Soft Growing Vine Robot System for Pipe Inspection
Rehabilitation of aging pipes requires accurate condition assessment and mapping far into the pipe interiors. Soft growing vine robot systems are particularly promising for navigating confined, sinuous paths such as in pipes, but are currently limited by complex subsystems and a lack of validation in real-world industrial settings. In this paper, we introduce the concept and implementation of a hermetic and transparent vine robot system for visual condition assessment and mapping within non-bra…

🐍 Crater Observing Bio-inspired Rolling Articulator (COBRA)
#robots #space

Crater Observing Bio-inspired Rolling Articulator (COBRA)
NASA aims to establish a sustainable human basecamp on the Moon as a stepping stone for future missions to Mars and beyond. The discovery of water ice on the Moon's craters located in permanently shadowed regions, which can provide drinking water, oxygen, and rocket fuel, is therefore of critical importance. However, current methods to access lunar ice deposits are limited. While rovers have been used to explore the lunar surface for decades, they face significant challenges in navigating harsh…

🦾 Bird-like robot with novel wing system achieves self-takeoff and low-speed flight
#robots

Bird-like robot with novel wing system achieves self-takeoff and low-speed flight
In 2021, a group of scientists from China engineered the RoboFalcon—a bird-inspired flapping-wing robot with a newly engineered mechanism made to drive bat-style morphing wings capable of flight. While this bio-inspired robot performed well at a cruising speed, it was not capable of flying at lower speeds or achieving takeoff without assistance.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Modular robots assemble into bridges, shelters and tools for outdoor tasks
#robots

Modular robots assemble into bridges, shelters and tools for outdoor tasks
Modular robots built by Dartmouth researchers are finding their feet outdoors. Engineered to assemble into structures that best suit the task at hand, the robots are pieced together from cube-shaped robotic blocks that combine rigid rods and soft, stretchy strings whose tension can be adjusted to deform the blocks and control their shape.

🦾 Humans sense a collaborating robot as part of their 'extended' body
#robots

Humans sense a collaborating robot as part of their 'extended' body
Researchers from the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Genoa (Italy) and Brown University in Providence (U.S.) have discovered that people sense the hand of a humanoid robot as part of their body schema, particularly when it comes to carrying out a task together, like slicing a bar of soap.

🍓 A Modular Soft Gripper with Embedded Force Sensing and an Iris-Type Cutting Mechanism for Harvesting Medium-Sized Crops
#robots #agriculture #farming

🦾 Research Status and Trends in Universal Robotic Picking End-Effectors for Various Fruits
#robots