Robots in AILAB
-Concepts are as many as robots-
WANDA
by Marc Ziegler
- Diversity of animalfs morphology is particularly impressive in the underwater world. It has been uncovered that various properties of morphology have been optimized for the efficient locomotion in the evolutionary process. In this project we explore such morphological properties for the purpose of underwater robot locomotion. Toward adaptive underwater locomotion, this project investigates a fish-like swimming robot. By using motor control with only one degree of freedom, this robot exhibits surprisingly rich behavioral diversity in three dimensional underwater environment.
Yokoi Robot Hand I, II, III
by Gabriel Gomez, Alejandro Hernandez Arieta, Hiroshi Yokoi, and Peter Eggenberger Hotz
Producted by Tsukasa Kiko Engineering
- The tendon driven robot hand is partly built from elastic, flexible and deformable materials. For example, the tendons are elastic, the fingertips are deformable and between the fingers there is also deformable material. It has 15 degrees of freedom that are driven by 13 servomotors, a bending sensor is placed on each finger as a measure of the position, and a set of standard FSR pressure sensors cover the hand (e.g., on the fingertips, on the back and on the palm). The robotic hand has 13 degrees of freedom, and each finger has been equipped with different types of sensors (i.e., flex/bend, angle, and pressure).
At the Artificial Intelligence Lab, we use the robotic hand to investigate the relationship between morphology, intrinsic body dynamics, generation of information structure through sensorimotor coordinated activity, and learning. We have implemented biologically inspired learning mechanism to allow the robotic hand to explore its own movement capabilities. Moreover, by correlating the sensory input as a result of its motor outputs, the robotic hand can learn to manipulate and grasp objects by itself (Gomez et al., 2005; Gomez et al., 2006).
iCub (head)
Developed withing the European Research project IST-004370 RobotCub Maintained and run at the AILab by Jonas Ruesch.
Robot Vision
by Raja Dravid, Martin F. Krafft, Gabriel Gomez and Jonas Ruesch
- The main objective to build this robot is to study the process of building a coherent representation of visual, auditory, haptic sensations and how this representation can be used to describe/elicit the sense of presence. The goal is the understanding of representation in humans and machines. We intend to pursue this in the framework of development e.g. by studying the problem from the point of view of a developing system. Within this framework we will use two methodologies: on one side we will investigate the mechanisms used by the brain to learn and build this unified representation by studying and performing experiments with human infants; on the other side we intend to use artificial systems (e.g. robots) as models and demonstrators of perception-action representation theories.
MiniDog I, II, III, IV
by Fumiya Iida
- To achieve rapid locomotion, exploiting morphological properties is essential. The running quadruped robot "MiniDog" is capable of relatively robust rapid legged locomotion by using intrinsic body dynamics induced by spring-like like property, weight distribution, and body dimentions. Owing to the use of body dynamics, the control of the robot is extremely simple and, moreover, it has rich behavioral diversity.
Tribolon(s)
by Shuhei Miyashita
- Tribolon is one of the lightest self-assembling robots which can self-assemble on the water surface.
Each module contains a vibrator to move/repel and a magnet attract/repel others.
The goal of this project is to achieve self-assembly and self-repair in a self-organized robotic system consisting of many modules. Towards this end, the size of the individual modules must be reduced significantly (from dm to cm). This is a necessary prerequisite for studying artificial gorganismsh composed of a large number of modules. Drawing from our existing experience in designing, constructing and controlling macroscopic multi-modular systems, we expect that smaller modules will encounter qualitatively different kinds of mechanical problems which cannot be solved by simply reducing the size of current macroscopic components like electrical motors. Therefore, this project focuses on finding gscale-invarianth principles for assembly and control based, for example, on exploiting module morphology and materials. We will employ both simulations and experiments with real world robots to explore how optimizing module morphology and material properties can facilitate self-assembly.
The name Tribolon is derived from Tribology, the research field exploring friction.
Pneumatic robot
by Raja Dravid
- This arm robot consists of actuators using highly non-linear pneumatic artificial muscles. For more detail, please ask the developer Raja Dravid.
RoboSuitcase
by Andreas Fischer
- The robot started as a remote controlled car (RC-car) with an in some ways special
body. The body is a hard-shell suitcase with an only slightly modi ed RC-car base
built into it. The RC-car is mounted in a way that the motor can power the rear
wheels, while the steering-servo is connected to one of the front wheels.
The suitcase can be switched from microcontroller control to usual remote control.
Therefore a receiver is built into the suitcase which can be activated through a
switch. This has been built in for demonstration purposes and is of no further use
in this assignment.
Artificial Mouse
by Simon Bovet and Miriam Fend
- We have developed an artificial whisker sensor based on microphones. Natural rat whiskers are glued onto capacitor microphones such that deformations of the whisker move the membrane of the microphone. This signal can be amplified and digitiliazed. AMOUSE aimed at the construction of a mobile robot equipped with an artificial whisker system that serves as a mean for validating models based on the results from neurophysiological experiments and neural modelling.
The AMouse is standard Khepera II robot equipped with two artificial whisker arrays. The whiskers consist of natural rat whiskers glued on capacitor microphones. Each whisker is thus a single sensor. The whiskers can be moved actively. Data acquisition is done on a laptop with a PCMCIA data acquisition card. Furthermore, the robot has an omnidirectional camera allowing experiments on tactile perception, multimodal issues and visual navigation.
Swimming Humanoid
by Marc Ziegler and Lijin Aryananda
- Through many experiments of this swimming humanoid robot, we have noticed that humans are restricted in many ways to swim.
For example, we have to take breath when we are swimming which is not the case in the robot.
Also a lot of aspect about human system have been revealed. More detail description will come soon.
Kondo Humanoid
Used by Pabro Ventura
Producted by Kondo Kagaku CO.LTD
- Currently we have 3 Kondo humanoids purchased from Japanese company.
An choreography artist Pabro Ventura have been using this robot for next surprise at an exhibition!
Crazy Bird
by Mike Rinderknecht and Maik Hadorn
- "Cheap" Quadrupedal Locomotion (AI Lab, University of Zurich, Switzerland) Body dynamics can reduce significantly both the computational effort and the complexity of an agentfs controller. In this work, we show that the phase delay between the legs of a quadrupedal agent as a unique controlling parameter is adequate to navigate on a 2D-surface.
Whirling Arm
by Lukas Lichtensteiger
- The "Whirling Arm" will be used at the Artificial Intelligence Lab as an experimental tool for research on insect vision. It can be seen as a kind of "flight-simulator for insect eyes": An artificial insect eye (camera or specially constructed compound eye) is mounted on the Whirling Arm and is then subjected to fast and complex movements through space that can (to some degree) mimic the actual situation encountered by the head of a flying insect.
One goal of these studies is to better understand how the specific features of insect eyes (e.g., its sensor morphology) relate to the visual input the animal encounters during its flight and how this can facilitate flight control. Since insects like the house-fly can navigate very fast the Whirling Arm has to be able to produce very fast reactions. Consequently it was designed for a minimum of inertia for each of its three rotational degrees of freedom while at the same time providing enough motor power for fast accelerations.
Stumpy I, II, III, IV
by Raja Dravid
- The Stumpy Project explores the fundamental design principles of locomotion on the basis of our biological knowledge. However, we do not simply copy the design of the biological systems, but we try to extract the underlying principles. One of the most fundamental challenges in this project is how to enhance the behavioral diversity of a robot by concerving the simplicity of the morphological and physiological design. Given this perspective, in this project, we are investigating the interplay between the oscillation based actuation, the material properties, and the interaction with the environment. Stumpy uses inversed pendulum dynamics to induce bipedal hopping gaits. Its mechanical structure consists of a rigid inverted T-shape mounted on four compliant feet. An upright "T" structure is connected to this by a rotary joint. The horizontal beam of the upright "T" is connected to the vertical beam by a second rotary joint. Using this two degrees of freedom mechanical structure, with a simple oscillatory control, the robot is able to perform many different behavior controls for the purpose of locomotion including the gait controls of hopping, walking and running.
mini stumpy
by Fumiya Iida
- Many types of small version of stumpy was built by Fumiya Iida.
Although the size of the robot significantly affects the whole dynamics of the robot, we have been showing the stability as a morphology and the mechanism relating to the dynamics.
Rabbit I,II
by Arthur Korn and Fumiya Iida
- The robot rabbit was built under the same concept of stumpy. It can move "forward" by jumping with two rotating mass. Also robustness against different types of ground with different frictions was observed.
Dumbo
by Fumiya Iida and Hiroshi Yokoi
- Dumbo is one of the outstanding robot that defis the common wisdom.
For more detail, please visit our lab!
- Here is a video (MPEG-4) of Dumbo in action.
Geoff
by Fumiya Iida
- The main objective of this project is to explore the design principles of biologically inspired legged running robots. In particular this project focuses on a minimalistic model of rapid locomotion of quadruped robots inspired by biomechanics studies. The goal of this project is, therefore, to achieve technology for a form of rapid legged locomotion as well as to obtain our further understanding of locomotion mechanisms in biological systems.
Schmaroo
by Alex Schmitz
- Schmaroo is a Kangaroo robot which can jump a few cm.
The robot has a camera and a long leg to generate vertical force to jump.
The name is derived from the developer Schmitz + Kangaroo.
Coffee
by Daisuke Katagami
- Coffee was developed to investigate human-robot interaction.
This robot has two actuators which enable the head of the robot to move around for several ways.
Through the experiment with this robot, we learned even simple nod movement of a head can classify into many types.
Patterfly
by Koji Shibuya
- In this project, we are trying to develop a robot capable of hovering by beating its wings. Making a robot, we focused on concepts of "cheap design" and "morphological computation," and we took advantage of "material property," which are proposed in the field of artificial intelligence recently. Based on the concepts, we designed a robot that had one D.C. motor and a crank mechanism for beating wings. The robot's wings beat in the horizontal plane, and were made by soft materials, such as polyurethane, cardboard, and plastic to increase air flow to downward. We observed videos of flapping wings and measured lifts in every materials and sizes of wings. From the results, we concluded that materials and sizes of wings should be chosen carefully according to flapping frequencies, weight of a robot, and so on.
Puppy I,II,III
by Fumiya Iida
- Most of the projects relating locomotion were launched by Fumiya Iida. This robot Puppy is one of the successful exemplars that reveals the stability of the intrinsic dynamics with the morphology.
This project shows that having an adequate morphology enables the dynamic system to achieve stable locomotion with simple controller (brain).
Bendy Robo
by Chandana Paul, Kojiro Matsushita, and Hiroshi Yokoi
- In this project, aiming at aquisition of design scheme of Pseudo-Passive Dynamic Walker, we have been deveropping the inferior limb robot both from systematic perspective and controlling perspective.
Fork Leg Robot
by Kojiro Matsushita and Hiroshi Yokoi
-
The relation between morphology and material property of a biped robot is worth to attack in the current state of the art of the field.
Considering the affinity of these two aspects, we designed the robot Fork Leg Robot.
Monkey Robot
by Dominic Frutiger, Fumiya Iida, and Josh Bongard
- How does monkey achieve jumping and climbing trees with such a heavy body?
In this project, we developed monkey robot to reveal the secret mechanism of monkey by investigating especially the intrinsic oscillation of the body.
Melissa
by Fumiya Iida
- Melissa is developed as a robotic platform for the Flying Robot Project which is a part of the Biorobotics research at AILab, Dept. of Information Technology, Univ. of Zurich. The robot Melissa is a blimp-like flying robot, consisting of a helium balloon, a gondola hosting the onboard electronics, and an offboard host computer. The balloon is 2.3m long and has a lift capacity of approximately 400g. Inside the gondola, there are 3 motors for rotation, elevation and thrust control, a four-channel radio transmitter, a miniature panoramic vision system, and the batteries.
Tripp
by Chandana Paul
- Tripp is a passive dynamic walking robot which serves as an experimental platform in the Biped Locomotion Project. Changing its shape and weight distribution by attaching and detaching weights to its body allows us to investigate the relationship between morphology and passive dynamics in locomotion.
The Dextrolator I
by Raja Dravid
- In its most complex configuration the Dextrolator is composed of seven segments, actuated by seven motors. It receives sensor feedback from 126 sensors. The primary tasks the manipulator must perform is to move through a tube without touching the walls, to find its way to a specific point in space and finally to navigate through an environment to a certain point while performing obstacle avoidance.
EyeBot
by Lukas Lichtensteiger
- A robot that is able to position its sensors autonomously using electrical motors. The task of the robot is to employ motion parallax to estimate a critical distance to obstacles. This task is achieved by adapting the morphology of the compound eye by an evolutionary algorithm while using a fixed neural network to control the robot. Each of the 16 long tubes contains a light sensor which can detect light within an angle of about 2 degrees. The tubes can be rotated about a common vertical axis.
T-Bot
by Lukas Lichtensteiger
- This robot is one example of a series of robots rapidly built from a children's construction kit using our Flexible Robot Building Kit. We used an artificial evolutionary system to evolve simulated agents that can complete some specific task. Particular attention was devoted to the role of the morphology of these robots with regard to their fitness in a specific environment. These simulated agents (left) were then used as blueprints to build real world robots (right). Finally, the robots were tested in a real world environment to evaluate their fitness.
ROBOT BABE
by Max Lungarella
- Our experimental setup consists of: (a) an industrial robot manipulator with six degrees of freedom (DOF), (b) a color stereo active vision system, and (c) a set of tactile sensors placed on the robotfs gripper. This robot has been used for experiments related with the field of developmental robotics.
samurai I,II
by Hiroshi Kobayashi
Produced by Neuronics, Inc.
- The Samurai robot was designed by Hiroshi Kobayashi and is being built by Neuronics, Inc., a spin-off company of the AILab. It will be used by undergraduate students in classes and tutorials in New Artificial Intelligence, but also for research purposes.
The Samurai is equipped with: An array of 12 infrared proximity sensors, 8 Bumper sensors, An omnidirectional color-camera, Differential steering with two 15 Watt DC motors, Motorola 68336 main processor.
Sahabot 2
by Dimitrios Lambrinos and Ralf Moller, in cooperation with Rosys AG
- Sahabot 2 was built by Dimitrios Lambrinos and Ralf Moller, in cooperation with Rosys AG, Hiroshi Kobayashi and Marinus Maris. As its predecessor, Sahabot, it was built for a specific experiment involving the navigation behavior of the desert ant cataglyphis, and is being run in the Tunesian part of the Sahara desert in August 1997 in the same area where ethologists collected data on the real cataglyphis.
Sahabot 1
by Dimitrios Lambrinos, Hiroshi Kobayashi, and Marinus Maris
- Sahabot was built by Dimitrios Lambrinos, Hiroshi Kobayashi, and Marinus Maris. It was built for a specific experiment involving the navigation behavior of the desert ant cataglyphis. It was run in the Tunesian part of the Sahara desert in july 1996 in the same area where ethologists collected data on the real cataglyphis.
Honey
by Hiroshi Kobayashi with some assistance from Rene Schaad
- Honey is a flying autonomous robot. It is an indoor blimp controlled by an off-board PC. It sports various sensors including a camera and four propellers for motion control. It was mainly developed by Hiroshi Kobayashi with some assistance from Rene Schaad.
Honey was mainly built for use in navigation experiments and for experiments involving human-robot interaction.
Yoko
by Hiroshi Yokoi?
Mrs.Gloria Teasdale I,II
by Rene Schaad
- Gloria is a modified Didabot. It improves on a Didabot by providing improved battery life (for now up to 1.5 hours), a protective cover, bump sensors, and a real-time clock. The modifications were made necessary because Gloria is serving as a buddy to Rufus, which operates in an unmodified office environment for extended periods of time.
Analog robot
by Ralf Moeller
- The Analog robot performs visual homing in purely analog hardware. The hardware is based on the "Average Landmark Vector" model. For a description, see our paper "Landmark Navigation without Snapshots: the Average Landmark Vector Model" which is available on Ralf Moeller's home page.
Morpho I
by Marinus Maris
- The control architecture of the autonomous robot Morpho I, which was built by Marinus Maris, is based on a neuromorphic design. Basically, there is a complete sensory-motor chip for robot control that takes care of all sensing (23 pixels contrast retina array), edge position detection (winner-take-all with position encoding), decision making (attention bias) and motor steering (a spike generator that delivers pulses for a servo). Its task is to follow one out of two possible lines. Which line is followed is controlled from outside of the chip adjusting the attention of the robot.
Sita
by Marinus Maris
- Sita was built by Marinus Maris. Sita is built on a model car base, like its brother "Famez" (below). It is equipped with a 1D camera (64 pixels), 16 IR and ambient light sensors, bumpers, and a speech generator. The task of the robot is to run for errands whenever asked. The speech generator (hopefully soon augmented with speech understanding possibilities) will enable the robot to verbally interact with humans.
Didabot
by Marinus Maris with system software by Rene Schaad and Daniel Regenass
- Ten educational robots were built by Marinus Maris with system software by Rene Schaad and Daniel Regenass for use in student education in the context of Prof. Pfeifers class "New AI".
It features: Based on R/C car (Tyco Scorcher), Very fast Differential 4WD (4 propulsed out of 6), Intel 16-bit 196KD microcontrollers (20 MHz), IR, and ambient light sensors, Programmable in C and assembler.
Rufus T. Firefly I, II
by Rene Schaad
- Rufus T. Firefly was built by Rene Schaad. It is a multipurpose extensible platform for autonomous agents research.
Famez
by Marinus Maris
- Famez is a fast robot relying entirely on only one sensor (one ultrasonic range finder). Three of them were built at our laboratory by Marinus Maris based on model car kits. Its top speed is ~10 mph. It features Motorola MC68331 and HC11 microcontrollers.
Junkyard Warrier ("Junkie")
by Rene Schaad
- This robot was built by Rene Schaad from "Stokys" metal construction parts.
It features: Car-like steering, 20Mhz Intel 196KD microcontroller, Sonar, 2 antennae, buzzer, Gripper.
Cyclope
developed by the Laboratoire de microinformatique at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne
- Cyclope was developed at the Laboratoire de microinformatique at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. We own one exemplar for evaluation purposes.
Features include: Circular shape, 12.5 cm diameter (5"), HC11 microcontroller, 64 element linear CCD array, bumpers, debugging board, IR remote control, graphic LCD etc.
Khepera series (gripper, camera, Khepera I, Khepera II)
developed by the Laboratoire de microinformatique at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne
Produced by K-team
- Khepera was engineered at the Laboratoire de microinformatique at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. The AI Lab currently owns 15 Kheperas.
Features includes: Circular shape, 5.5 cm diameter (2.2"), The small size enables desktop experimenting, 2 DC motors for differential steering, 20 min. autonomy, or power-by-wire, Motorola MC68332 microcontroller, Miniature gripper forthcoming.
Koala
developed by the Laboratoire de microinformatique at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne
- The robot Koala has similar architecture to Khepera, but with larger body size.