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RoMeLa | Robots
20215
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Robots

Meet Our Robots!

OmnUR is a novel unicycle robot using an active omnidirectional wheel. Unlike conventional omni wheels, the rollers around the circumference can be actuated directly, which provides mobility in both longitudinal and lateral directions simultaneously. The effect is that OmnUR can balance itself based on the principle of dual-axis wheeled inverted pendulum. With its very agile mobility and compact design, it might be used in human environment in the future.

ICARUS (Integrated Conceptual Air-ground Robotic Unmanned System) is a novel drone design. It has 2 Intermeshed Propulsion Units, with 2 rotors in each of them and is powered by one single powerful brushless DC motor. The two rotors in each IPU always rotate in opposite direction with the same speed. By controlling the pitch on each rotor with servors, different thrust can be easily generated. ICARUS can flip its thrust in half second, which makes it capable of handling big turbulance and doing aggressive maneuvers. The application of IPUs gives ICARUS a unique aspect ratio which can be preferrable for future air-ground vehciles.

LARA (Luskin Automated Robot Assistant) is a miniature humanoid created for UCLA’s Luskin Conference Center. LARA provides guests with information about the hotel, UCLA’s campus and the surrounding area. Her cheerful smile and wave have become an iconic part of the hotel lobby. Future versions of LARA will have facial recognition and tracking as well as being a research platform for human-robot interaction.

DanTE (Dynamic Anthropomorphic Tactile Endeffector) is a biomimic three fingered robotic manipulator. By taking advantage of its quasi direct drive actuation system, DAnTE can perform both powerful precise grabing and high speed soft touch. The fingers are driven by a tendon system that is inspired by human finger structure. The finger system is carefully designed with mechanical intelligence embeded, enabling the finger to automatically shape itself to any object or the best gesture for manipulation.

DROMEUS (Dynamic Running On Multifaceted Environments Using Springs) is a single, springly leg attached to a long boom arm for testing the design and control of dynamic running and jumping. Inspired by the hopping robots of Marc Raibert but modified for adaptability, DROMEUS is designed to use rotary actuators and a gastrocnemus/plantaris tendon spring to store energy when jumping.

This actuator module is a revolutionary piece of technology that represents a paradigm shift in robot actuation hardware. In contrast to traditional servo actuators, this new actuator module is designed to be backdrivable and highly impact resistant thanks to its low gear ratio, making it great for dynamic legged robots that may jump and run. The complete module includes all the power electronics and liquid cooling accessories, allowing it to be used with ease.

This hexapod was the first robot ever built at RoMeLa in UCLA, and has the blood, sweat, and tears of all of the students who built it. The structure itself is made of carbon fiber tubes, machined aluminum, and modular servo actuators, but is designed to be a base platform on which further systems can be developed. One such system is a demining system, where the robot can find landmines autonomously and agile manipulars can be used to disarm undetonated mines in a post-war zone.

THOR-RD (Tactical Hazardous Operations Robot – Rapid Deployment) is a disaster relief humanoid robot that is a modified version of THOR-OP2. It is fully actuated with 31 degrees of freedom controlled by modular position control actuators, and uses IMUs, F/T sensors, LIDARS, webcams, and other various sensors to conduct both locomotion and manipulation. At 150 cm and 54 kg, THOR-RD is about the same size as a person, and has the functionality to match. It participated in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals in 2015 in Pomona, California, USA, while it also became a world champion in robot soccer competition Robocup 2015 held at Hefei, China.

This pair of legs originally belonged to the THOR-OP robot that RoMeLa sent to the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials in 2013. These days they are being given new life as a research platform for bipedal locomotion. Each of the 6DOF legs utilize modular servo motors and contain absolute encoders at each joint. Current research objectives include walking on uneven terrain, push recovery and online gait planning.

CARL-2 (Culinary Assistant Robotic Limb v2) is the latest iteration of a chef robot that has found a new passion in magic! The previous iteration, CARL, was the sous chef for Dr. Dennis Hong in season 4 of MasterChef USA, tasked with dicing vegetables and measuring ingredients. CARL-2 is the reincarnation of CARL, but has a much more diverse skillset and is able to perform a wide range of manipulation tasks, such as magic.

SiLVIA (Six Legged Vehicle with Intelligent Articulation) is hexapodal robot developed for general tasks, with emphasis on wall climbing. It weights 10kg, but can lift up to 20kg and walk with a payload up to 5kg. It can brace between a pair of vertical walls and climb up with only frictional support force. If suction cup is equipped, it can also attach itself to a single smooth wall and perform manipulation. SiLVIA also has modular foot components, allowing it to switch among walking, climbing or any thing else that it might need to accomplish.

Robots are often associated with being heavy, mechanized metal objects. In fact, most current legged robots are unsafe, unstable, complex, expensive, and slow. BALLU is a robotic system that uses buoyancy to aid its stability and increase safety. This unique approach makes it intrinsically stable at all times and prevents it from falling. As a matter of fact, it cannot fall. Helium filled balloons make up the upper body. Although the entire robot is not lighter than air and will not float, the buoyancy force from the body assists lightweight legs to stay upright keeping the robot in a stable, standing posture. All actuation, communication, and power components are built into the feet which make up the majority of the robots mass. The current prototype is a biped with two degrees of freedom. Only the knees are actuated (cable driven from the feet). Yet, with only one degree of freedom per leg, the robot can walk forwards, walk backwards, step sideways, turn, hop, and perform other types of motion. This is achieved with correct timing of the actuation of each knee along with careful consideration for momentum, drag, joint velocity, joint friction, and joint elasticity. In addition to these locomotion capabilities, BALLU’s stability and safety can potentially further advance various aspects of the human-robot interaction experience.

ALPHRED (Autonomous Legged Personal Helper with Enhanced Dynamics) is a multi-modal robot that use four limbs to traverse and manipulate the world around it. ALPHRED is designed with symmetry in mind, so any limb can be used for any task. Because of this, ALPHRED is capable of operating across a variety of terrains in both a quadrupedal (4 legs) form and bipedal (2 legs) form. In its bipedal form, ALPRHED can use its two free limbs as arms to interact with its environment, giving it additional versatiliy!

NABi (Non-Anthropomorphic Biped) is a low cost, low complexity bipedal robot that can walk, jump, and even dance! NABi is built with lightweight, modular components, but its design modifies the traditional humanoid form by aligning its legs in a plane, allowing it to only have 4 actuated joints compared to the normal 12. It also features springy feet, allowing it to comply to the environment and store energy for dynamic motions, like jumping.

SAFFiR is a bio-inspired bipedal robot designed for finding and extinguishing fires aboard naval ships. SAFFiR is powered by custom linear serial elastic actuators that incorporate custom titanium springs. It will utilize an advanced sensor suite to navigate the difficult environment caused by smoke, heat, and water vapor. SAFFiR is designed to use many available fire suppression methods including hoses, fire extinguishers, and PEAT canisters. It will be protected by high-temperature thermal shielding, and is designed to traverse a ship environment including difficulties such as stepping over sills and walking in sea state conditions. This project is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR)

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The THALeR project (pronounced “taller”) is a research study in how vertical-height-scaling affects robot mobility, specifically robots of the same form as STriDeR. The key advantages of being very tall are being able to step over obstacles as well as being able to traverse naturally rough terrain. Our design approach is to simultaneously answer two codependent questions: How should the robot walk and what physical design is the best for walking? We are applying advanced computational techniques to study the complex system dynamics and gain insight to invariant techniques of good walking. We will be first validating our simulation results on a 2[m] prototype named “SMALeR” and then extending to a 10[m] tall future prototype.

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DARwIn-OP: An Open Platform, Miniature Humanoid Robot Platform for Research, Education and Outreach. The objective of this annual workshop is to; introduce DARwIn-OP to the humanoid robotics community to broaden the DARwIn-OP project and form a user community; train the users for use in research, education, and outreach activities; disseminate results of the usage of DARwIn-OP in the classroom; and to obtain feedback from the users for future improvements.

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STriDER (Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot) is a novel three-legged walking machine that exploits the concept of actuated passive dynamic locomotion to dynamically walk with high energy efficiency and minimal control. Unlike other passive dynamic walking machines, this unique tripedal locomotion robot is inherently stable with its tripod stance, can change directions, and is relatively easy to implement, making it practical to be used for real life applications.

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CHARLI is the United States’ first full-size autonomous humanoid robot. It’s mechanical design has allowed experimentation into the effects of different mechanical configurations, mostly in the legs, on the performance of bipedal walking and balancing. CHARLI is capable of walking in all directions as well as turning, kicking, and performing gestures and simple upper body manipulation tasks. A variety of hands and grippers have been experimented with for various objects or goals.

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IMPASS (Intelligent Mobility Platform with Active Spoke System) is a wheel-leg hybrid locomotion robot with high mobility for unstructured terrain. Utilizing rimless wheels with individually actuated spokes, it can follow the contour of uneven surfaces like tracks and step over large obstacles like legged vehicles while retaining the simplicity of wheels. Since it lacks the complexity of legs and has a large effective (wheel) diameter, this highly adaptive system can move over extreme terrain with ease while maintaining respectable travel speeds, and thus has great potential for search-and-rescue missions, scientific exploration, and anti-terror response applications.

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MARS (Multi-Appendage Robotic System) is a hexapedal robotic platform capable of omni-directional walking and of performing manipulation tasks. Patterned after the LEMUR IIb (Legged Excursion Mechanical Utility Rover), the latest in a series of hexapedal robots developed at NASA JPL, it is developed for autonomous inspection and maintenance tasks on the exterior of space structures and vehicles in zero gravity environments. MARS is also a general research platform to study mobility over difficult environments such as costal terrain and uneven surfaces.

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CIRCA (Climbing Inspection Robot with Compressed Air) is a unique climbing robot that utilizes McKibben air muscles to climb scaffolding structures for inspection tasks. By connecting multiple CIRCA modules together in different configurations, different methods of locomotion can be achieved. For example, a ‘doughnut’ configuration would be useful for climbing a pole, and a helical configuration would be useful for ground locomotion.

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Unique snake-like robot that utilizes a new way of locomotion to climb pole or scaffolding structures.

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DARwIn (Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence) is a family of fully autonomous humanoid robots capable of bipedal walking and performing human like motions. Developed at the Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) at Virginia Tech, DARwIn is a research platform for studying robot locomotion and autonomous behaviors, and also the base platform for Virginia Tech’s entry to the RoboCup competition.

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The Whole Skin Locomotion is a novel locomotion mechanism for mobile robots inspired by the motility mechanisms of single celled organisms that use cytoplasmic streaming to generate pseudopods for locomotion. The embodiment of WSL works by way of an elongated toroid which turns itself inside out in a single continuous motion, effectively generating the overall motion of the cytoplasmic streaming ectoplasmic tube in amoebae.

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MiniHUBO (Miniature Humanoid Robot) is an small affordable adaptable robot platform. MiniHUBO is a miniaturized version of the HUBO developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). The goal of MiniHUBO is to develop an affordable and open-ended research platform to expand knowledge in the human robotics field. MiniHUBO is designed to be simple to fabricate and assemble. MiniHUBO is Designed with a flexible control unit capable of easily integrating sensors to increase capability.

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DAVID (Demonstrative Automobile for the Visually Impaired Driver) is the world’s very first, and only vehicle than can be driven by the blind, developed in response to an initiative proposed by the National Federation of the Blind (Blind Driver Challenge). Through the development and integration of novel non-visual driver interfaces on an existing vehicle platform, the goal is to provide the blind with a degree of independence that they have never before experienced.

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RAPHaEL (Robotic Air Powered Hand with Elastic Ligaments) is a dexterous robotic hand powered by compressed air with a novel actuator in the shape of an accordion like corrugated tubing. Each finger of the hand is actuated by three actuator segments connected to a single compressed air line. All three segments of the finger moves as compressed air enters the actuator triggered by a solenoid, and the finger returns to its original position by elastic members attached to the finger when the air is cut off. The force, position, and compliance of the finger is controlled by a electronic air pressure regulator through feedback from the bending position sensors and force sensors at the tip of each fingers. This mechanism significantly simplifies the design, control, and implementation of a dexterous hand and dramatically lowers the cost enabling it to be a cost effective practical solution for use in prosthesis.

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The Cam-based Function Generating Transmission is a novel mechanism that takes two inputs, an angular rotational input and a ‘gear ratio’ selection, and outputs an angular rotation with a variable speed ratio. This transmission has unique characteristics such as generating specific functional speed ratio outputs including dwells, for a constant velocity input.

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