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http://www.discover.com/issues/jul-04/departments/biomechanics-of-cockroaches/
I was reading the July issue of Discover (quickly becoming one of my favorite
magazines) at the library and found an article about development of robotic leg
locomotion.
what follows is my narrative/impression of the article since I can’t link to a
full text of it. I personally am very intrigued by the real-world versions of
our sci-fi/fantastical ideas. The issue also contains information about the
proposed Space Elevator.
The guy, Robert Full, says that legs are first and foremost, springs. And that
the springing motion follows that of a sine curve. Two legged creatures, like
us, he says, really just bounce around on two pogo sticks. Interestingly
enough, all legs have the same amount of bounce - regardless of species or size.
It takes one joule of energy to move 2.2 pounds of body a distance of 3.3 feet.
But the really fascinating part of the article is the discussion of the benefit
of this type of locomotion over traditional robotic bipeds and wheels.
Traditional robot-bipeds
and wheeled robots are such that at any given moment they are fully stable.
Organic movement (springy movement) is such that at any moment it is unstable -
constantly falling from unstable position to another.
This means that Springy Motion, by being unstable at moments, creates greater
overall stability. Full attached a small jet pack on a roach’s backside. The
jet was programed to fire sideways (relative to the roach’s movement) and knock
the roach off balance. Everytime the jet fired, the roach was able to regain
balance within 10 milliseconds, which is faster than any possible neural
reflex. This means that the roach brain doesn’t need to devout any effort to
maintaining its balance; this effort can be redirected into other activities
like figuring which way to go, etc.
Applying this to LEGO Robot and Bot construction, this means that Pedal robots
are more realistic (given a future timeframe) than wheeled robots - or at least,
they have the potential of being equally or even more efficient in their
locomotive abilities.
enjoy!
-Lenny
Burdick, Alan. “The Biomechanics of Cockroachs: Building the Perfect Pest.”
Discover vol. 25 #7 pg24 - 25
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