Tag Archives: iit
HyTAQ Robot Goes from Air to Ground and Back in a Split-Second
It seems as if the robots are getting ready for an assault from both land and air these days. Just yesterday, we saw a creepy hexacopter that could also crawl, and now we have a drone that can both roll along on the ground and fly.
The Hybrid Terrestrial and Aerial Quadrotor (HyTAQ) robot was designed by Arash Kalantari and Matthew Spenko at The Robotics Laboratory at Chicago’s IIT. At first glance, it looks like an ordinary quadrotor, set into a cage. But that cage serves more than just a decorative purpose – it provides the means for the robot to roll on the ground.
The polycarbonate and carbon fiber cage is attached to an axle which can spin freely around the center of the quadrotor. By landing the quadrotor on the ground and and using the same actuators to drive it along the terrain. It’s a really cool and elegant design that also is able to protect its rotors from damage. Check out HyTAQ in action below:
Man, that thing can switch from ground ops to air ops so fast. The robot apocalypse can’t be far behind now – or at least the coolest robot toys you’ve ever played with.
HyTAQ hybrid quadrotor robot travels by air and land, leaves us no place to hide (video)
Few robots can travel gracefully through more than one medium; more often than not, they're either strictly airborne or tied to the ground. The Illinois Institute of Technology's HyTAQ quadrotor doesn't abide by these arbitrary limits. The hybrid machine, designed by Arash Kalantari and Matthew Spenko, uses the same actuators to drive both its flight as well as a surrounding cage for rolling along on the ground, quickly switching between the two methods. It's clearly adaptable, but using the one system also provides large power advantages over a traditional quadrotor, Spenko tells us. While HyTAQ's battery lasts only for 5 minutes and 1,969 feet of pure flight, that jumps to 27 minutes and 7,874 feet when the robot can use a smooth floor instead -- and of course, it can hop over ground obstacles altogether instead of making a detour. The range of the robot and its pilot are the main limiting factors, but the patent process is already underway with hopes of winning commercial deals. We're both excited and worried as a result; as wonderfully flexible as HyTAQ is, widescale adoption could lead to especially relentless robots during the inevitable takeover.
Filed under: Robots
Source: IIT
HyQ is the latest all-terrain quadruped bot, tells Big Dog to bring it on (video)
You might not know this, but you can literally never have enough all-terrain quadrupedal robots... at least according to us (John Connor might disagree). So, while HyQ from the Italian Institute of Technology might bear more than a passing resemblance to Boston Dynamic's Big Dog, we won't hold it against the creators. The Hydraulic Quadruped robot (HyQ for short) was first dreamed up in 2008, but the project is only now coming into its own. Researchers at IIT took the bot for a stroll outside of the confines of a laboratory and treadmill for the first time. They've also stepped up the treadmill testing by bumping up the incline and practically throwing obstacles at it. Impressively, HyQ holds his own, even as his creators pelt it with shipping pallets. Check out the video after the break to see the cybernetic crawler in action.
Continue reading HyQ is the latest all-terrain quadruped bot, tells Big Dog to bring it on (video)
HyQ is the latest all-terrain quadruped bot, tells Big Dog to bring it on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 May 2012 01:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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