Robotic cheetah cub via Telegraph UKUnlike the country-wide turkey Smörgåsbord happening in the United States over Thanksgivukkah, at the Science Museum of London visitors will be spending the long weekend feasting their eyes upon a mini bevy of exotic robotic creatures. Gathered from different spots throughout Europe, the Robot Safari is the perfect antidote for too much time spent with your real, live family.
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Opening today and extending through Sunday, December 1, the special exhibition will feature engineered habitats populated by thirteen different robotic fauna, including a bionic flying Bat-Bot out of the Centre for Automata and Robotics at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Spain, a cheetah cub engineered by École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland (above), a whole shoal of illuminated fish models named Jessikocreated by Robotswim SARL of France, a diving turtle hailing from the Centre for Biorobotics of the Tallinn University of Engineering in Estonia, and mechanic salamanders also from EPFL. Some, such as the DodecaRob, a dodecahedral 12-legged robotic from the University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania, will wow by merely mimicking a tumbleweed blown by the wind.
JessikoExperts will be on hand to educate exhibition goers on the importance of the field of biomimetic robots, assisting them with interactive features, such as petting the electronic creatures and stretching the bat's wings. There will even be lessons on programming, building, and racing one's own simple robots. The greater goal, according to the show’s Content Developer Nicola Burghall, is to educate participants of this innovative safari on how the nature inspired robots are in turn helping advance scientific understanding of their inspirations.
The bat-Bot via Science Museum UKFor example, the stealthy iTuna hailing from Universidad Politécnica Madrid, Spain, can use its silent artificial muscles and noiseless propellers to monitor real fish without alarming the school. Arrows, the robotic turtle, can deep dive to spend hours independently investigating archaeology buried under water wrecks. Pleurobot, the salamander, whose movements replicate X-ray captures of natural salamander movements, will help research on motor techniques. Its amphibious counterpart, Salamandra Robotica II, will help unveil how the neural circuits in a salamander’s spinal cord fire to make it move in the slick way it does. Finally, the motorized cheetah is the fastest quadruped robot on the globe weighing less than 22 pounds, moving at 3.18 miles per hour at full throttle (though there are heavier models that go faster). So while the cheetah robot’s velocity has nothing on the spotty beast of the jungle, its ability to mirror the movements of real cats’ legs is aiding further understanding of feline locomotion, and being applied to rove gingerly over rough terrain.
Salamandra Robotica IIEven if you can’t personally make it to see all this and more, the Safari Guide is worth a good look and a drool during turkey time.
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The DodecaRob via The Daily MailJessikoExperts will be on hand to educate exhibition goers on the importance of the field of biomimetic robots, assisting them with interactive features, such as petting the electronic creatures and stretching the bat's wings. There will even be lessons on programming, building, and racing one's own simple robots. The greater goal, according to the show’s Content Developer Nicola Burghall, is to educate participants of this innovative safari on how the nature inspired robots are in turn helping advance scientific understanding of their inspirations.