Jizai’s robotic arms are for show, while this innovative baby sea turtle-inspired robot developed by a team of robotics experts at the University of California San Diego can move through sand. It’s capable of traveling through sand at a depth of 5-inches at a speed of 1.2 millimeters per second. There are force sensors at the end of its limbs for obstacle detection, while a WiFi module lets you control it untethered.
The team hopes to better understand sand and how robots can most efficiently travel through it. Some of the issues that need to be overcome include the friction between sand grains that lead to large forces, avoiding obstacles and figuring out how to travel between sand when it behaves like a liquid or solid. This robot prototype senses obstacles by monitoring changes in the torque generated by the movement of its flippers, and two foil-like surfaces keep it at level depth in the sand.
- AUTHENTIC: The Turtles range in heights from 4.25 to 4.6" tall and are highly detailed with individual sculpting and decoration to match each Turtle...
- ACCESSORIES: Each Turtle comes with their core iconic weapon accessories and an added weapons/accessory rack.
- HIGHLY POSEABLE: Each Turtle figure is highly poseable with 12 points of articulation for battle action poses
We needed to build a robot that is both strong and streamlined,” said Shivam Chopra, lead author of the paper describing the robot in the journal Advanced Intelligent Systems.
