Researchers from Virginia Tech are on the job

Jul 26, 2010 13:46 GMT  ·  By

When mechanical engineer Dennis Hong, from the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) at Virginia Tech, was 7 years old, he saw Star Wars for the first time. The sight of so many robots captured his imagination, and set him on a path that would later see him turn into a renowned robotician. He is now working with a team that is funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), for developing advanced robotic mechanisms for a wide variety of applications.

“When I was seven years old, I watched the film 'Star Wars' for the very first time. It just completely blew my mind. All the robots and spaceships... R2D2, how it moved, its locomotion, inspired me to study robot locomotion, and C3PO, the human servant robot, inspired me to study human-robot interaction,” the scientist recalls of the days that would change his life. He says that his job now is to produce innovative robots that could help humans by lending a helping hand in a variety of tasks.

“CHARLI (Cognitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning Intelligence) is an adult-sized robot getting into the game as well. It has two cameras on the head, looks around, searches for the ball, figures out where it is, and based on that, it kicks the ball to the goal,” he says of one of his inventions. Another is RAPHaEL (Robotic Air Powered Hand with Elastic Ligaments), an innovation that could in the near future be used to improve the functionality of prosthetics and artificial limbs.

Another example of a machine developed at Virginia Tech is the Cable-suspended Limbed Intelligent Matching Behavior Robot (CLIMBeR), which was designed keeping in mind the American space agency's need to explore planets such as Mars and Venus. The machine is capable of escalating very steep cliffs, and could in theory be outfitted with several scientific instruments. Even at a prototype stage, the machine is sufficiently rugged to withstand a trip and landing on Mars.

“Yeah, many of these wacky robot concepts originate from my dreams. I go to bed at three or four in the morning and when I close my eyes, I see these weird circles and blocks and lines exploding in my head and some of these assemble and form these weird types of robotic mechanisms. Next to my bed, I keep a Notepad and a special pen that has an LED light on it because I don't want to wake up my wife by turning on the light,” the expert says.

“I just jot down and sketch everything and go back to bed. Every morning before my first cup of coffee, before I brush my teeth, I open my journal. Many times, it's empty. Many times, it's all scribbles. But from time to time, I see these really ingenious ideas hidden in my sketches and that's my eureka moment. I type all my ideas into a database on my computer. When we have calls for proposals in robotics, I look at my database of ideas and try to find a match,” he concludes.