Their research paper “Toward a Vocabulary of Legged Leaping” details how they taught the robot the tricks to not only run, but also jump and execute the equivalent of robotic back flips and triple jumps. The nearly 15-pound, 20-inch long robot can jump up ledges, and can even do leap grabs that let it ascend an impressive 28 inches. Now that the robot knows the leaping lingo, it could use it to take instruments or sensors to the right locations, or right itself when it flips over.

Image via UPenn Kod*lab

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The goal here was to create bio-compatible designs that mimic and take advantage of nature to build machines and solve problems. While the bio-bot is only 7 mm long — about a quarter-inch — it could be used in drug testing or other chemical detection jobs. Integrated sensors that react to certain chemicals could be installed on the bio-bot and cause it to veer away from specific chemical compounds, indicating their presence. It could be a 7mm-self-propelled canary in the coal mine.

From a release on the topic:

“The idea is that, by being able to design with biological structures, we can harness the power of cells and nature to address challenges facing society,” said Bashir, an Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering. “As engineers, we’ve always built things with hard materials, materials that are very predictable. Yet there are a lot of applications where nature solves a problem in such an elegant way. Can we replicate some of that if we can understand how to put things together with cells?”

The bio-bot moves because it’s asymmetrical, with one long, thin leg resting on a shorter, wider support leg. The thin leg is covered in the rat heart cells and when those heart cells beat, the long, thin leg pulses and moves the bio-bot forward. Yes, this sounds utterly creepy, but it’s undeniably cool to watch this thing spasm its way across the surface in the video:

As an aside, this is the second awesome research project I’ve read about being built by academics using a 3D printer. On Wednesday MIT detailed how students used a 3D printer to make a new type of radio antenna out of new meta-materials, which it compared to the planet-destroying Death Star from the Star Wars movie. The new antenna might be useful for deep-space imaging or perhaps microscopy at the nano level, but all I could think of was MIT students are using their 3D printers to recreate stuff from Star Wars movies.

Now I can add the folks at the University of Illinois to the list of institutions where researchers are taking 3D printers and building stuff out of science fiction novels.

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Baxter (left) with Rethink Robotics CEO Rodney Brooks.

Rethink Robotics, the company behind Baxter, will release a software development kit (SDK) for the robot in January that could open the floodgates for new applications, said Rodney Brooks, robotics genius and CEO of Rethink. “Our story is manufacturing, but there will be new software every two to three months with new capabilities,” Brooks told attendees of EMtech 2012 at MIT Wednesday morning. “Researchers will find places to use it that we wouldn’t have guessed.”

Baxter is appealing for personal applications like eldercare and healthcare assistance because it is easily trained by mere mortals who can walk the robot through its tasks — without coding.  And, unlike large and powerful industrial robots of the past — which are segregated from people on the factory floor for safety reasons — Baxter is approachable by actual people.

“Yes,” Brooks said, “you can hug this robot.”

The idea of robots helping senior citizens is not new. There is increasing evidence that it is both more economical and healthier to keep older people in their homes, as opposed to nursing homes or assisted care facilities, so there’s a potentially huge market for technology that can help.

As Scientific American reported in 2010:

The idea is to use robots, resembling anything from lunch carts to human companions, to assist seniors and the homebound with day-to-day tasks as well as communications with family members via social networking, videoconferencing and the Web. For this to work the interface with the robot must be intuitive, and robot-makers must allay any misgivings that the elderly might have about relying on new technology to watch over them.

I watched a Rethink employee train Baxter to perform a set task and it was pretty amazing. Because of the easy user interface — you pick up Baxter’s arm and move it through the required motions, then push a button to save that sequence — Baxter really does seem, as Brooks said, more like an iPhone than a robot. That means health aides, nurses or grandchildren could train Baxter to perform a range of repetitive tasks.

Baxter picks up Junior Mints.

Given the demographics of the aging population, there will be a need for much more productivity in eldercare going forward, Brooks said. Baxter sports an expressive on-screen “human” face that can register uncertainty if he is unable to comprehend what he’s supposed to do.

Baxter just started shipping, and Wednesday’s event at MIT’s Media Lab was his first public showcase. He (or “it,” as Brooks prefers to call Baxter) held center stage in the MIT Media Lab’s Winter Garden, plucking up boxes of Junior Mints and candles and loading them into a plastic Jack O’Lantern.

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The robots, which represent an entirely new and potentially disruptive way of managing solar panels, won’t have to be under cover for much longer. Made by a new VC-backed startup called QBotix (which we briefly mentioned last month), the robots are making their public debut on Tuesday and Qbotix says its robots are being used for their first commercial installation at a solar panel project later this month.

“Think of it as a doctor going from one patient to the next, and in the process it’s sending information about the health of every tracker it visits,” Wasiq Bokhari, QBotix’s CEO, tells us during a visit to the site last week.

While it’s not uncommon for ground mounted solar panels to use what are called trackers to tilt panels to follow the sun throughout the day, the use of robots for solar trackers is highly unusual. Existing trackers on the market are designed to hold up solar panels as well as to adjust their tilt, and commonly come with their own motors and electronics. There’s generally two kinds of these trackers, single-axis and dual-axis, and dual-axis systems make finer angle adjustments and are often times more expensive because they require more motors.

QBotix’s robotic trackers perform dual-axis adjustments at the price of the same-sized single-axis trackers and enable the panels to produce up to 15 percent more electricity, says Bokhari. QBotix’s design essentially replaces the motors in each tracker with a robot that calibrates the optical angle for each set of solar panels and positions them accordingly.

It’s pretty interesting to watch the robots in action. A robot — about 1.5-meter long and 1-meter high — runs along an elevated track and stops by each tracker that holds up several solar panels and tweaks the angle of the panel. Since the sun moves in a 10-degree arc every 40 minutes, QBotix has designed its robots to be able to adjust 200 trackers with 1.5-kilowatt of generation capacity each every 40 minutes. After working on the last tracker at the end of the 40-minute round, the robot returns to the first tracker to start the next set of adjustments.

Each battery-powered robot also comes with a backup robot. So each robot and a backup robot will be responsible for 300 KW of installation. For a 1 megawatt project, for example, a QBotix tracker system will have eight primary and backup robots. The robots are all equipped with GPS, sensors and a wireless connection and can continuously report data back to the solar project owner. Think of it as a solar tracking system for the age of cloud computing and robotics.

The first commercial installation of a QBotix system will take place this month in the San Francisco Bay Area, but Bokhari declined to disclose where as well as the customer’s name. The startup is assembling the robots at its headquarters now and plans to hire contract manufacturers do the job later if it’s not able to handle the amount of orders.

The first test system went up a year ago and used a prototype design that QBbotix engineers later modified with more durable components. The company put in a new and improved test system a few weeks ago. Installing test systems is important not just for improving their engineering, but it also provides field data that solar power project investors look at for determining if a new technology is worth their funds. The startup needs three- to six months worth of field data to demonstrate its technology.

QBotix also has designed its robotic trackers to work with solar mirrors that direct and concentrate sunlight onto a boiler to produce steam and generate electricity. But the company’s first target market segment will be projects that use conventional solar panels.

Founded in 2010, QBotix has raised $7.5 million in venture capital so far, including a $6.5 million Series A round earlier this year from investors including NEA, Firelake Capital, Siemens and DFJ JAIC. NEA recently pointed to Qbotix as an example of how the firm is still making new bets on young cleantech startups, despite the difficult environment for cleantech companies this year.

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Doesn’t get much cooler than that. The robot, which is a proof of concept developed by AeroVironment (yeah, that company that makes electric car chargers), was modeled after the Ocean sunfish, which floats near the top of the surface of the water. Scientists think the sunfish does this to either bask in the sun, or invite birds to clean it, but the solar robot obviously does this to charge itself up.

Once it’s got enough power the robot swims, with its robot fins, closer to the bottom to conduct whatever sensor experiments its masters tell it to do. It’s got a data logger to collect environmental data, and a long flexible tail of solar panels to add on more power capacity.

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Real-world applications could include military use — most of the drones used by the U.S. now are remotely-piloted not autonomous. Civilian applications might include aerial filming for land surveys, environmental monitoring and meteorological data collection.

Update: (More on the flying robot from MIT News here.)

Check out the cool video.

Video courtesy of MIT’s news office.

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I recently visited the headquarters of two Las Vegas startups, Romotive and Walls 360, that are busy making their own stuff. It was eye-opening to see to see how hardware and physical goods are made in an increasingly software-centric world. You can read more about what these companies are up to, or just check out this slideshow of what daily life looks like.

Eat, sleep, build robots

For Romotive, one of the startups that Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh has lured to Las Vegas, life is definitely interesting right now. The company, which is less than a year old and just raised $1.5 million from some prominent angel investors (including Hsieh), spent the month of February building around 2,000 mobile-phone-powered robots by hand in two apartment units that serve as both living and working space. When I stopped by, the apartment was packed with parts and shipping boxes, and marketing head Zach Buchanan told me there was more to come. On average, he said, it takes about 20 minutes to build a single robot, although the team assembles them in stages rather than doing one at time from start to finish.

Team Romotive. Credit: Andrew Seid.

The big order was the result of a successful CES outing, where it sold 80 of its $99 robots, which offset the cost of its booth space and generated some positive press. For the Christmas season, Co-Founder and CEO Keller Rinaudo told me a few days earlier, Romotive only had to build about 100 robots. Buchanan said the company was selling about 6 robots a day online before CES, but now is selling about 26 per day.

Romotive plans to move out of its apartment and into a co-working space Hsieh is building in downtown Las Vegas, but I was left wondering if shared space will suffice if the company scales as its investors think it can. Rinaudo suggested that a change in the company’s focus, which is now split about 50-50 between hardware and software, might change its need for space.

“We’re defining this new market of smartphone robotics,” he told me, and as the hardware part becomes commoditized and new form factors spring up to do new things, Romotive could be in the position to serve as the platform powering them. It wants to “bring the app store to robots,” he said, where Romotive apps would serve as the brains for whatever physical robots consumers want to buy.

Where artists and mechanics meet

The decision to come to Las Vegas was a little different for Walls 360, which creates high-resolution, stick-on wall art on special fabric that can be removed and replaced up to 200 times. It didn’t need Tony Hsieh’s money — Guy Kawasaki and a who’s-who of graphic arts already invested in its angel round — but it did need cheap space and lots of expertise in large-format printing. Las Vegas gave it both.

Tavia Campbell, avatar-style

Co-founders Tavia Campbell and John Doffing have actually been at this for a few years, previously working out of San Francisco and then Philadelphia, but when they decided last year to stop outsourcing and start printing their own products, they had to make a new business model and find a new home. Las Vegas has proven to be a great decision, Campbell told me, because the company’s only real costs now are administrative, ink and fabric — rent in the industrial sector (its neighbor is a crankshaft repair shop) is practically a non-factor — and the city actually has a great mix of artists and printing professionals that honed their skills working on projects for casinos and trade shows.

Walls 360′s other co-founder, Yiying Lu, lives in Australia. She’s best known as the graphic artist who designed Twitter’s infamous “fail whale.”

Right now, Walls 360 makes most of its money from partnerships like those with EA around its video games, from contract printing jobs for conventions and other events, and from individual sales of its custom prints. However, because individual orders are printed on demand, Campbell said the plan is to let customers upload their own images and have Walls 360 print them. She said Walls 360 is also thinking about leveraging cheap storefront space in downtown Las Vegas to open its own store, possibly doubling as a gallery where artists could display and sell their work as Walls 360 prints.

Life is a little more complex for startups when they have to account for stuff as well as staff, and when delivering a product means the workers — not their servers — have to deliver the goods. But it also creates some unique go-to market opportunities and might make it easier to convince consumers to buy a product. Apps are great, but there’s nothing quite like forking over some cash and having a new something in your hands.

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There’s a new mobile app store available for millions of devices, but it’s not for iOS, Android, or Windows Phone handsets. As of Tuesday, the newest app store is for robots, and the first four apps are compatible with the estimated 6 million iRobot Roomba vacuums. Yes, we now have an app store for robots!

MyRobots.com just launched the new store which has some similarities to other mobile app stores. For example, the company will take 25 percent of any paid transactions for robot apps. One huge difference, however, is that these apps will run directly on a robot, or in the cloud for connected robots. Don’t expect, then, to see smartphone apps that interface with robots in this store.

The first initial applications add some interactivity to the Roomba, including a free app that allows you to have a text chat with your mobile vacuum. The three others are all priced at $25 and range in functionality: remote control over the web; mobile surveillance if you have a web-cam on your Roomba; and a telepresence app for when you’re away from home.

A developer program for the Robot App Store is now in beta, so developers can sign up to help shape the storefront with apps. Will this store ever rival the size and scope of the iTunes App Store? That’s not likely, but I do see many reasons to believe home robotics is the next big thing. I shared those ideas back in 2010 in a GigaOm Pro report (subscription required), saying the brains and sensors in a smartphone are enough to get the home robot movement rolling.

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Scientists are hard at work on the question, allowing their big brains to run wild and come up with out-of-the-box offerings for the web worker of the future … and they’re dreaming of robots.

California company Anybots, for example, has designed an adorable robot avatar that you control from home while it rambles around the office displaying a video of your face, interacting with co-workers. You’d better hope your corporate headquarters doesn’t have any stairs though, as the Anybot is unable to handle them.

But scientists at Tokyo’s Sony Computer Science Laboratories have come up with an innovative solution to deal with this so-called “Dalek problem” of maneuvering up and down stairs – a floating robot avatar head. They report:

We developed a floating avatar system that integrates a blimp with a virtual avatar to create a unique telepresence system. Our blimp works as an avatar and contains several pieces of equipment, including a projector and a speaker as the output functions. Users can communicate with others by transmitting their facial image through the projector and voice through the speaker. A camera and microphone attached to the blimp provide the input function and support the user’s manipulation from a distance. The user’s presence is dramatically enhanced compared to using conventional virtual avatars (e.g., CG and images) because the avatar is a physical object that can move freely in the real world.

Having trouble imagining what on earth this floating avatar could look like? Check out this New Scientist video:

How does the idea of your boss’s virtual head floating around the office strike you – Creepy? Cool? A little of both?

Image courtesy of Flickr user misocrazy

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