Cornell Creative Machines Lab

Nick Cheney at Cornell has developed a way for robots to evolve within days.

By Marshall Honorof
TechNewsDaily

NEW YORK — Robots are simply more efficient than humans at certain tasks. They already excel at building cars, exploring distant planets and hunting for explosives, but it turns out that robots might also evolve much faster than their flesh-and-blood counterparts.

Nick Cheney, a Ph.D. student at Cornell University, presented his research at an Inside Cornell lecture on May 21. Cheney has developed a method by which complex computer simulations in a specific virtual environment — robots, by his definition — can evolve from selective pressures, just like animals in nature, but on a timescale of days instead of countless generations.

To demonstrate the technology, Cheney showed how a series of diverse but effective robots spontaneously evolved from a single, inefficient ancestor. He programmed a virtual environment with only one parameter: robots that moved faster would be able to produce more offspring. Therefore, the only selective pressure was speed (in the wild, Cheney compared this behavior to running from predators).

"Nature is amazing in how it designs things," Cheney said. "We want robots to interact with their environments as naturally as animals do." Cheney considers natural selection — the process by which biological organisms survive, reproduce and change over time to better suit their environments — to be a natural algorithm, extremely similar to what engineers use to optimize robots over time.

Cheney's initial robot, a shambling, cubic progenitor, was not much to look at. It barely stumbled along a straight line in no particular hurry. However, small mutations occurred in its offspring, and the fastest specimens bred with each other. As subsequent generations evolved, reproduced and died, the robots took on much more diverse appearances and began to speed across the screen.

The robots did not resemble traditional animals in any meaningful sense. Although they had come a long way since their initial boxy shape, they were still collections of small squares rather than sleek, curved specimens.

One robot resembled an accordion, constricting and stretching out as it made its way across the screen. Another, which looked like a wave about to crash, walked on three small points, almost falling over itself before finding its balance every few steps. Others walked on two distant legs, or maintained balance through rotating, top-mounted appendages. [See also: 10 Incredible 3-D Printed Products]

"These robots walk in ways we would never have thought of," Cheney said. Letting robots evolve without human oversight eliminates many of the preconceived ideas and biases that humans bring to the table by default. "We start from randomness, which is the way life started for us. Most of the random ones are pretty bad, but every once in a while you get lucky, and one will be better than the others."

Although these robots are confined to virtual space for the moment, that won't be the case forever. Thanks to the advent of 3-D printing, Cheney envisions a future where his robots could be powered by air, pressure-sensitive materials, electricity or even muscle, tissue and bone like real animals. Recent developments in 3-D printing have produced biologically viable heart cells, liver cells and even skull pieces.

"What we could explore with this is virtually limitless, which is what excites me most about it," Cheney said. Rapidly evolving robots with specific parameters could create everything from a better vacuum cleaner to complex search-and-rescue robots, but Cheney stresses that this is not the beginning of an adversarial relationship between humanity and its creation.

"In the future, we'll have more of a collaboration than a competition," he said. "Working together will be more fruitful than trying to take over the world."

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Bart Drees / AP file

Researchers believe new findings about the curious locomotion of fire ants could give engineers lessons for building automated search-and-rescue robots designed to hunt for human victims trapped underground.

By Eric Niiler
Discovery News

Much of the South has been living with fire ants for decades, and most youngsters there know to avoid trampling their giant underground nests unless they are looking for a swarm of painful bites. It turns out that these pesky insects are extremely good at running through tunnels without clobbering each other and even using their antennae as extra limbs.

And researchers believe these new findings about their curious locomotion could give engineers lessons for building automated search-and-rescue robots designed to hunt for human victims trapped underground.

Scientists at Georgia Tech have been studying fire ants as they scurry through their nests, some of which can hold up to 100,000 individuals and become evacuated in minutes if they are flooded with water or attacked by larger predators. The ants are an invasive species, brought to the United States from South America where their native habitat is often subject to natural cycles of floods.

Robot Ants Mimic a Real Colony

After several years of watching ants in two-dimensional and three-dimensional nests constructed in his laboratory, Nick Gravish, a postdoctoral student in the Department of Physics, found that tight spaces and jam-packed passageways didn’t seem to bother them. In fact, with a top speed of 9 body lengths per second, they are basically sprinting past their fellow drones or workers inside the colony.

"We were so surprised to see them move so fast," said Gravish, first author on a study appearing today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "And their motion was filled with slips and missteps. You get a sense that slipping and falling is not a problem. We see that ants can run over the top of each other, and lift each other up. They can scramble as fast as possible and there’s no penalty for that."

Gravish and collaborators professor Daniel Goldman and Michael Goodisman, and researcher Daria Monaenkova, used X-ray tomography to study tunnels the ants built in the test chambers. They also used video tracking equipment to watch them move through tunnels made between two clear plates. This scientific ant farm was mounted on an air piston which was fired, dropping the maze so the ants would lose their footing and fall. The ants used their antennae as extra limbs to stop their descent. Nobody had really seen them doing that before, he said.

The same kind of crawling and falling movements will likely be faced by search-and-rescue robots in the future.

Run! Top 5 Fastest Robots to the Rescue

"We're very interested in how the next generation of robotics, which is going to be at the millimeter scale, will move through torturous complex environments," he said. "These ants are a good system to look at locomotion and this is one of the first studies to look at locomotion of ants in their own environment."

However, one robotics expert agreed that studying insects like ants can give good clues for building some kinds of autonomous devices, but cautioned not to be too optimistic that engineers can duplicate what nature has done over millions of years.

"The characteristics of the animals and response of the (robot) sensors are typically so different that it is problematic to just copy what you see in their behavior to run it on the robot," said Achim Lilienthal, director of the Mobile Robot and Olfaction Laboratory at the University of Orebro in Sweden.

Lilienthal recently build a "gas-bot" that can follow traces of methane escaping from a landfill using special laser sensors, and is working on problems of robot sensing and smell.

"The world looks very different for the robot," he said.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

This device, an environmental sample processor, automatically collects a sample of water and then rapidly tests it for DNA and toxins. The device is being deployed in the Gulf of Maine to watch for the potentially harmful toxins released by algal blooms known as red tides.

By Douglas Main
LiveScience

Two new sensors that can detect the presence of algae and the dangerous chemicals the microscopic organisms produce will soon be installed in the Gulf of Maine, off the coast of the U.S. Northeast, in an effort to keep authorities and the public better informed about issues with water quality.

One sensor is already in the water and the other will be put in later this month, according to a statement from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

A schematic of the monitoring device.

In addition to detecting the type of algae that live in the water, the devices will automatically measure water quality and instantly transmit that information to people on shore. They're particularly designed to look for two types of toxic algae, which make poisons that can concentrate in shellfish and cause illness or even death when consumed by people.

The first is a single-celled alga known as Alexandrium fundyense, which produces paralytic shellfish poison. PSP, as it's known, can concentrate in shellfish and caused paralysis when eaten, hence the name. The second microbe, Pseudo-nitzschia, is responsible for amnesic shellfish poisoning, another illness that derives from tainted shellfish, according to the statement.

Blooms of these algae are often referred to as red tides because of their reddish hue. 

The sensors, known as environmental sample processors, are akin to small molecular biology labs packed into a device the size of a kitchen garbage can. They are anchored to the seafloor and float near the surface.

The devices will compliment the 12 buoys that monitor temperature, salinity (or salt content) and meteorological conditions in the Gulf of Maine and Long Island Sound, known as the Northeastern Regional Association of Coastal and Ocean Observing Systems.

"This deployment is a critical step towards our long-term dream of having a network of instruments moored along the coast of the Gulf of Maine, routinely providing data on the distribution and abundance of (harmful algal blooms) and toxins," said Don Anderson, a  researcher at the institute and the project's principal investigator, in the statement.

Email Douglas Main or follow him @Douglas_Main. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

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DMC, INAH/M. Marat

The archaeologists used a 3-foot-long, remote-controlled robot which was able to explore the last part of the tunnel.

By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery.com

Hundreds of mysterious spheres lie beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, an ancient six-level step pyramid just 30 miles from Mexico City.

The enigmatic spheres were found during an archaeological dig using a camera-equipped robot at one of the most important buildings in the pre-Hispanic city of Teotihuacan.

"They look like yellow spheres, but we do not know their meaning. It's an unprecedented discovery," said Jorge Zavala, an archaeologist at Mexico's National Anthropology and History Institute.

PHOTOS: The Temple of the Feathered Serpent

The Mesoamerican ruins of Teotihuacan, a World Heritage Site, represent one of the largest urban centers of the ancient world. Thought to have been established around 100 B.C., the pyramid-filled city had more than 100,000 inhabitants at its peak, but was abandoned for mysterious reasons around 700 A.D. — long before the Aztecs arrived in the 1300s.

The excavation at the temple focused on a 330-foot-long tunnel which runs under the structure. The conduit was discovered in 2003 when heavy rain uncovered a hole a few feet from the pyramid.

Exploring the tunnel, which was deliberately filled with debris and ruins by the Teotihuacan people, required several years of preliminary work and planning.

"Finally, a few months ago we found two side chambers at 72 and 74 meters (236 and 242 feet) from the entrance. We called them North Chamber and South Chamber,” archaeologist Sergio Gómez Chávez, director of the Tlalocan Project, told Discovery News.

The archaeologists explored the tunnel with a remote-controlled robot called Tlaloc II-TC, which has an infrared camera and a laser scanner that generates 3-D visualization of the spaces beneath the temple.

"The robot was able to enter in the part of the tunnel which has not yet been excavated yet and found three chambers between 100 and 110 meters (328 and 360 feet) from the entrance," Gómez Chávez said.

The mysterious spheres lay in both the north and south chambers. Ranging from 1.5 to 5 inches, the objects have a core of clay and are covered with a yellow material called jarosite.

DMC, INAH/M. Marat

The Temple of the Feathered Serpent, also known as the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, is a six-level pyramid decorated with snake-like creatures.

"This material is formed by the oxidation of pyrite, which is a metallic ore," Gómez Chávez said. "It means that in pre-hispanic times they appeared as if they were metallic spheres. There are hundreds of these in the south chamber."

According to George Cowgill, professor emeritus at Arizona State University and the author of several publications on Teotihuacan, the spheres are a fascinating find.

"Pyrite was certainly used by the Teotihuacanos and other ancient Mesoamerican societies," Cowgill told Discovery News. "Originally the spheres would have shown brilliantly. They are indeed unique, but I have no idea what they mean."

NEWS: Maya Observatory Hints at Origin of Civilization

Even the walls and ceiling of both chambers were covered with a mineral powder composed of magnetite, pyrite and hematite which provided a special brightness to the place.

"We believe that high-ranking people, priests or even rulers, went down to the tunnel to perform rituals," Gómez Chávez said.

Indeed the archaeologists found many offerings, including pottery and wooden masks covered with inlaid rock crystal, jade and quartz — all dating from around 100 A.D.

Gómez Chávez and his team now look forward to the next phase of the project — exploring the last part of the tunnel and three chambers which archaeologists have seen through the robot cameras.

"The tunnel is in pristine condition, untouched for almost two millennia," said Ng “TC” Tze Chuen, an independent researcher who worked on the design of the Tláloc II-TC robot. "Can you can imagine what can be found inside?"

Ng, who helped create the Djedi robot that explored Egypt's Great Pyramid in 2010, believes the Mexican tunnel might lead to one of the most significant archaeological finds in Teotihuacan.

"The results are very encouraging indeed," he said.

According to Gómez Chávez, the tunnel was sealed twice by the Teotihuacan people. Thick walls, erected to block access, were demolished about 1,800 years ago in order to deposit something very important in the central chamber at the end of the tunnel.

"Maybe in this place," Gómez Chávez said, "we will find the remains of those who ruled Teotihuacan.”

Dr. Noriyasu Ando

A close-up view of the moth steering the robot by walking on a rotating ball.

By Tanya Lewis
LiveScience

Beware of robots driven by small insects. A group of researchers has put a silkmoth in the driver's seat of a small two-wheeled robot to study how the insect tracks down smells.

Understanding the scent-tracking behavior of a silkmoth (Bombyx mori) could help scientists develop robots that are able to sense environmental spills and leaks by smell, according to the new study.

Researchers chose to use a male silkmoth because of the distinctive mating dance it uses to zero in on a pheromone — a chemical signal from its mate. The insect moves in a straight line, followed by zigzagging, a pattern that allows it to detect clusters of odor molecules.

Baby driver
The moth was able to "drive" the robot by walking on a rotating polystyrene ball onboard, like a trackball controlling a computer cursor. The insect drove the robot inside a wind tunnel, which simulated the flow of air the moth would feel if it were flying. The moth drove upwind to track the pheromone. [ See Video of the Moth Driving ]

The moth successfully located the source of the scent and drove the robot toward it in all initial trials. When the researchers covered the robot with white paper — essentially blindfolding the moth — it was still able to reach the target (the pheromone source) about 84 percent of the time.

Then the researchers tweaked the robot to make it veer more toward one side. The moth compensated by walking in the other direction on the steering ball, making it to its target about 80 percent of the time. When the robot was made to veer to the side and also blindfolded, the moth found its target only 54 percent of the time. The results suggest the insect was steering by both its sense of smell and its sense of sight.

The researchers also introduced a delay between when the moth sent steering commands (by walking on the ball) and when the robot actually started turning. The moth's control of the robot worsened gradually when the delay was longer, but it could still drive the robot to the goal most of the time.

Mimicking nature
The study builds on previous work aimed at understanding odor-guided navigation, biologist Mark Willis of Case Western Reserve University, who was not involved in the research, told LiveScience. "We don't have a man-made odor detector that's anywhere near as good as what the biological world has on offer," Willis said.

Further experiments with the insect-controlled robot will provide a "blueprint" for biologically inspired robots, the researchers reported Tuesday in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.

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NASA

The Dextre robot on the International Space Station is seen near the Robotic Refueling Mission testbed outside the International Space Station in this camera view in January 2012.

By Mike Wall, SPACE.com

An International Space Station experiment testing the ability of robots to repair and refuel orbiting satellites has resumed, after being stalled for a week by a software glitch.

NASA's Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) resumed operations Tuesday after engineers finished analyzing loads and software limits for the space station's Dextre robot, agency officials announced in a Tuesday mission update.

RRM calls for Dextre, which sits at the end of the orbiting lab's huge Canadarm2 robotic arm, to perform simulated refueling and repair tasks on a washing-machine-size platform affixed to the station's exterior.

The latest round of RRM experiments started Jan. 14 and was expected to last about 10 days, but a software glitch halted activities after just a day.

The RRM module, which consists of activity boards and tools necessary to demonstrate on-orbit refueling, launched to the station in July 2011 aboard the space shuttle Atlantis, which was making the last flight in the shuttle program's 30-year history.

The experiment's goal is to demonstrate technology that could someday fix and refuel orbiting satellites robotically, thereby extending their lives and potentially saving satellite operators billions of dollars over the long haul.

Such work can be challenging, since current satellites were generally not designed to be serviced.

The first RRM experiments began last year, when controllers on the ground used the two-armed Dextre to snip some wires with minimal clearance.

The latest round of activities will be more complex and involved, as Dextre will snip more wires, unscrew caps and pump simulated fuel, NASA officials have said.

Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

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