Scientists over the world have reached new moving robots that overcome the old robots movements.
The first robot is using three rotating steel coils to move instead of wheels, it can walk through the rough or smooth land.
Wisconsin engineer Tim Lexen built and designed the rover. At its heart is a flat triangular PVC main body (measuring about 7 inches/17.8 cm per side) that houses three electric servo motors, battery packs, and
electronics. These independently power its three 8-inch (20.3-cm) stainless steel helical coils, also known as screws, each one extending horizontally from one corner of its body. The screws incorporate a low-friction outer coating that keeps them from getting stuck against rough surfaces while their augering action allows them to push or pull against those surfaces to move the rover in any desired direction. For this reason, it works best on textured surfaces such as dirt, grass, sand, or gravel, as opposed to completely flat, smooth surfaces.
The next robot uses air jets power to climb any wall using supersonic version of fluid dynamics.
The principle is Bernoulli’s, and it simply states that as a fluid moves faster, its pressure or potential energy decreases. So if you send high-pressure air squirting out around the rim of a round gripper, it creates a kind of vacuum pocket inside that can be used to grip things from a very close distance without ever touching them. Robotic grippers based on this principle aren’t novel, they’ve been use to pick up objects that, due to fragility or perhaps reasons of sterility, need to remain untouched. These kinds of grippers don’t generally create enough suction to hold up an entire robot, but a team of researchers at New Zealand’s University of Canterbury has built a supersonic Bernoulli gripper that is five times stronger than a conventional suction device–plenty strong enough to support the weight of a small bot.
The third robot doesn’t need legs nor wheels, it tumbles end over end.
Developed at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Distributed Robotics, “Aquabot,” as it’s called, has two little arms on either side of it that flip it’s brick-like body end-over-end as it gets around. It’s definitely not graceful — it looks a lot like what would happen if your router tried to crawl across the floor.
Still, this tumbling motion — coupled with a rugged body, mind you — allows Aquabot to overcome all kinds of obstacles, from shallow stairs to bumpy landscapes. Of course, Aquabot wouldn’t be “Aquabot” if it didn’t get wet, too, and the little tumbler enjoys quite a bit of control underwater as it can manage its ballast and sink, rise or even float in place at a certain depth.