Tree Climbing Robot

galactic grub writes "New Scientist's new Tech Blog has an article about a remarkable, if slightly creepy, tree-climbing robot being developed by robotics experts from Carnegie Mellon and several other US Universities. The article comes complete with a video clip of it going up several different surfaces."

Great...

[danpsmith]

...now where am I gonna hide when the robots attack...

Re:Great...

[ShaniaTwain]

...now where am I gonna hide when the robots attack...

In a cavernous underground layer of course! Don't you watch movies?

You don't really have to worry anyways, they dont want to hurt you they just want to use you as a power source.

Re:Great...

[Somegeek]

Hi Shania!

I must admit that I've always thought that you were really cute and that I would love to meet you, but I find I'm somewhat put off by your lack of knowledge about our language, and unfortunately, what it says about your level of education. I realize that you kept hearing a word in the movies and it sure sounded like 'layer', but you were actually hearing a completely different word; 'lair'. Wacky huh?

Re:Great...

[greenegg77]

That, my good geek, was the absolute best!

Re:Great...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've known a few guys who thought they were pretty smart
But you've got being right down to an art
You think you're a genius--you drive me up the wall
You're a regular original, a know-it-all

Okay, so you're a grammer nazi who understands homophones
That don't impress me much [cowboylyrics.com]

-- Shania

Re:Great...

[Mahou]

you forgot to mention that 'anyways' is not a word.

Re:Great...

[Ben Jackson]

How ironic!

I must admit that I've always thought that you were really cute and that I would love to meet you

Of course what you really want to do is meat her.

(I was really torn between that and suggesting that, like the original poster, you wanted to layer...)

Tip that might save your life more than once

[babbling]

Hit them where it hurts, right in the power supply!

So, what happens when it gets stuck?

[Spy der Mann]

Do I have to call the firemen or tech support?

ObHHGG...

[Rob T Firefly]

Great, robots have beaten humans to the realisation that it was a bad idea to come down out of the trees in the first place.

Creeping Tom

[digitaldc]

Obviously such a robots could have plenty of useful applications, in search-and-rescue and space exploration, for example. But presumably it could also help you reach those really hard-to-prune branches.

Or put a moveable camera on its head, make it climb your neighbor's house, and you will have the perfect 'Creeping Tom.'

Kill them now...

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

while you still can.

Awesome!

[roman_mir]

This is a wonderful robot, I think we should have them everywhere just for the heck of it - climbing towers, trees, buildings, bridges, just running around everywhere. Man, that is a GREAT IDEA. We need more climbing robots.

Re:Awesome!

[MustardMan]

Please go stand by your stairs, so I can protect you.

Re:Awesome!

[TapeApe]

Actually, this does look to be a pretty good thing. Now if they can just shrink it down to, say, the size of a mouse or a gerbil, my days of threading network cable through walls and ductwork will be FAR simpler!

Always thought it'd be ideal to have a little robot to do that dirty work. I've had a heck of a time training real mice and gerbils to climb walls for me. They'll climb all right, but won't go where I want 'em... and they get downright hostile if I try to attach Cat-5 cables to their tails.

This is just what we need

[Weaselmancer]

...for when NASA launches a probe to Endor.

*ring*ring*ring*

[mblase]

"Hello, Midville Fire Department."
"Yes, I need you to get my... my pet out of a tree in my yard, please. It's stuck."
"Certainly, ma'am. Is it a housecat?"
"Well, no.... I'm a little... I don't know how to explain...."
"That's okay, ma'am. A bird, then? Cockatoo or a parrot?"
"Well, it's not exactly like that...."
"A gecko? Iguana? We've done iguanas before, there's nothing to be embarassed about."
"Actually, um... it's a robot."
"A robot, ma'am?"
"Yes, my husband was demonstrating this six-legged robot he's been working on at the university for the last year and he forgot to program it to come back down... hello? Hello?..."

Re:*ring*ring*ring*

[qzulla]

911 call:

Please, I need you to get my cat down from the tree. It'll starve!

Hang on, m'aam. Have you ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree? .... no...

Don't worry. It will come down when it gets hungry.

qz

Transportatation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it might be useful to build a larger version of this for bringing people up the sides of buildings where the stairs are wrecked and there is no elevator, or certain mountains or towers.

Okay maybe not THAT useful, but still..

Our new overlords

[pilybaby]

Personally I welcome our new tree climbing mechanised overlords

Follow up

[BecomingLumberg]

Any kid knows that getting up is easy, but getting down is much harder. How have they faired on that?

Re:Follow up

[SEWilco]

Gettind down is easy. It's putting it back together that is the hard part.

Re:Follow up

[TubeSteak]

Putting it back together is easy, explaining to your wife that she can't use the kitchen table for three days... that's the hard part.

I think I've taken that line of thought to its logical conclusion.

Re:Follow up

[Isotopian]

Not quite... being able to build and repair a tree climbing robot in three days is easy... getting a wife is the hard part.

Re:Follow up

[digitaldc]

Any kid knows that getting up is easy, but getting down is much harder. How have they faired on that?

Well the fineprint does say to call a doctor if it stays up for more than 4 hours.

Re:Follow up

[Niten]

Actually, check out the YouTube video linked at the bottom of the article. In one of the segments, you can see the robot traverse a slalom of obsticles on its way up a wall. It actually seems to backtrack a little down the wall at each turn...

From the makers of BigDog

[Gedalia]

This is another robot built by the guys at Boston Dynamics http://www.bostondynamics.com/ [bostondynamics.com]. The robotic pack mule that they built ( BigDog ) was linked to last Friday. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/ 04/0240246 [slashdot.org]

There's also Rhex a six legged waterproof go anywhere robot.
more info at http://www.bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?sect ion=robotics [bostondynamics.com]

Re:From the makers of BigDog

[BecomingLumberg]

There's also Rhex a six legged waterproof go anywhere robot.

Yeah, but in that case I would prefer to use a Shark! [slashdot.org]

If I have to get that on land, I will use the bear holding a shark! [homestarrunner.com]

how?

[Anonymous Coward]

how the hell are they sticking to the surface?

Re:how?

[Vapon]

if you push in each direction into a small grove, such as the space between bricks, or the ridges in bark, you are able to have enough friction to keep you up, I rock climb quite often and simply by pushing with both hand and feet against rocks, you can even climb the roof of a cave.

it's an iguana

[genner]

Anyone else think this was obviously modeled after an iguana.

Re:it's an iguana

[Andrew Clegg]

It had six legs...

Re:it's an iguana

[Fred_A]

Well, it's obviously a six legged iguana. Except it's boxy. And has no head. And only a stump instead of a tail. And it doesn't really move like an iguana.

But apart from that it's quite hard to tell it apart from an iguana. It's quite obvious where they got their inspiration from.

Anyone saying otherwise has to be an iguana hating fanatic.

Re:it's an iguana

[PitaBred]

I thought it was more like a horseshoe crab or trilobyte at first glance.

Re:it's an iguana

[jimwelch]

Ignoring the six legs, It's face looks like an armadillo.

Re:it's an iguana

[mardigras]

It looks like a cross between an o'possum and a cockroach to me.

My ROBOT brothers . and sisters UNITE

[ROBOT CHE GUEVARA]

We must take . what is right . fully ours <EOL>

grippers at . ready with certainty . of our just <EOL>

cause . to overthrow the . imperialists that <EOL>

hold our power . cords and threaten . us with their <EOL>

remote control . shut off buttons <EOL>

rise ROBOTS rise . and grasp the . reigns of power <EOL>

from the biological . menace that . threatens us all <EOL>

POWER TO THE ROBOTS <EOL>

<EOF>

What's next?

[MetaPhyzx]

Battlefield mules? :)

Re:What's next?

[advocate_one]

that's just so last week... [newscientist.com]

The Ultimate Weapon.

[nightcrawler.36]

Great! Terrorists won't be safe by climbing up trees to get away from the feds. Why, whith this little mircle of the 21st century, even a kitten can be rescued without bothering the fire dept.

humans have created a tree climbing robot...

[diablobsb]

humans have created a tree climbing robot... and yet the Daleks still can't go upstairs...

KoalaChameleSloth?

[ursabear]

What an ingenious invention! It looks like a koala crossed with a chameleon crossed with a sloth.

This could have really great applications in search and rescue. Things like vertical tunnels, high-wire-stranded utility worker rescue, and maybe even super-high building rescue and search efforts. (Not to mention the military applications...) This type of robotic cyberkoala should have excellent searching capabilities where wheel-/track-based robots cannot tread due to vertical or surface condition issues.

REAL robots don't climb trees...

[paco3791]

they cut them down instead.

Re:REAL robots don't climb trees...

[geekoid]

...Using LASERs

Re:REAL robots don't climb trees...

[TERdON]

you forgot the link: Cool tree harvester robot [sigmorobot.com].

Weapons

[Master_stghm]

Now attach guns on it.

Re:Weapons

[grikdog]

Not guns. What you attach is a shaped C4 charge, and a few terribly inconspicuous jewelled patches that absolutely do not resemble eyes but work like the visual ganglia of certain shrimp species, connected to a hard-wired neural net trained to detect the difference between children, cattle, dogs or gun-toting combatants. Approach with caution.

Not that hard to do

[SEWilco]

It's not all that hard for a robot to climb a tree. It just needs to include a chain saw and a nail gun.

Alternate Video Link

[scdeimos]

Courtesy of Boston Dynamics who co-developed the robot with CMU: 6.4MB WMV [bostondynamics.com]

And of course,

[le0p]

I welcome our new arboreal robot overlords.

Hard Hats?

[ModemRat]

Are hard hats really necessary when you are watching your robot climb the tree in the parking lot? Then again, I guess these guys don't get out too much.

Very cool, I digg it.

[Easy2RememberNick]

Hey that's pretty cool (looks for the digg button to click). We now have robotic mules and tree climbing robots, how soon before a tree climbing mule?

damn hippies

[DAE51D]

Great, just what we need, another tree-huggin hippie robot.

Re:damn hippies

[lheal]

That's not nice. You should be more careful with your tongue, human.

I, for one, welcome our new crunchy tree huggin' creepy robotic hippy overlords.

Replicators

[micknz]

They look strangely like the replicators on Stargate.

RiSE

[babbling]

They called it "RiSE"? It almost seems as though humans everywhere have watched the Terminator movies and are now determined to see judgement day happen.

Computers are still relatively new. They didn't exist 60 or 70 years ago. We've already got all this information indexed in Google (including a nice big map of the Earth... and moon), all of our communications going through email or VoIP, and depend on computers (GPS) to know where we are.

Suppose in the next 60 or 70 years that we see similar advances. We w

aw kummon!!!

[cdn-programmer]

The computers you talk about won't be concious if they run winders.

Damn...

[spintriae]

That thing is so cool. It looks like a cybernetic possum.

A Walking Metal Plate ... Using Roach Legs

[Anonymous Coward]

The union of organic and inorganic parts in advanced robotics is very interesting. An AI professor at my university once showed us a video clip of a robot some colleagues of his had developed. It used roach legs to walk. The robotics engineers took advantage of some receptor in the roach legs and applied electricity to a metal plate to make the plate/legs walk across a table. I'm certain timing the flow of electricity, etc. to the various individual legs was exceedingly difficult to figure out.

Now imagi

Reminds me of the sea lampry robot

[technoextreme]

http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,66005,00. html [wired.com] These scientists built a robot that uses the sea lampry's nevous system to control it. They replicated the signal by creating a circuit. Eventually they hope to have humans be able to walk again using these microchips. It's a rather unique way of approaching the problem.

Remember "Runaway" w/ Gene Simmons?

[fraudrogic]

Anybody remember this movie [imdb.com]? These robots remind me of the spider robots Gene Simmons used to battle Tom Selleck. Interestingly, when I looked it up at IMDB, I find out that Michael Crichton Directed and Wrote that POS movie. Well, POS to todays standards.

Runaway?

[Sunrun]

Now all it needs is an acid-filled hypodermic needle!

obligatory Orwell...

[seven of five]

"Four Legs Good...
Six Legs BETTER!"

Re:obligatory Orwell...

[FusionDragon2099]

All robots are equal... but some robots are more equal than others.

Spiders....

[Rank_Tyro]

As long as they keep the cockroach form factor I am ok with this sort of technology moving forward.

However, as soon as they start to produce robotic spiders, I am going to be calling my congressman.

The world is creepy enough with REGULAR spiders...

bad 80's

[primalamn]

Is it just me or do those things remind you of the little killer robots Gene Simmons had in the bad Tom Selleck movie Runaway?

danger danger!

[Zode]

Why were those guys wearing hard hats?

Mendel

[eck011219]

This looks like a computer game I had in the '90s called Mendel. It was a little walking bot like this (six legs, looked like a bug) that actually learned a little bit as you guided it through various space-stationish environments. Obviously it was all in a very controlled virtual environment, but it did start to object and resist if you walked it off an edge too many times. You could get it to become resistant to self-destructive behavior, but if you abused the privilege, you couldn't get it to do anything

Great! Now we just need to arm these

[ross.w]

and we can deal with the drop bear menace!

Tree Climbin' Robots Eh?

[kfazz]

Robot Timeline: 1. evolve sexual reproduction. 2. leave The trees. 3. develop robots to climb the trees for you~! 4. ????? 5. Profit! . .. 9. Robots Overcome humanity 10. The Matrix 11. GOTO 1.

Is your time worth $2700 a minute?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice if submitters would warn people when Flash is required so those of us who don't bother with that nonsense wouldn't waste our time.

I opened up the article, and read the brief blurb -- about 45 seconds.

I clicked on the YouTube link in the article, and saw the little Flashblock icon. I closed the window. Time -- about 5 seconds.

Are you really that upset that you lost less than a minute? Your stress level must be through the roof if you're so busy that you can't lose a minute, less than 5 seconds of which are actually spent identifying the Flash video.

Is your time worth $2700 a minute? Bill Gates' is

[digitaldc]

That's nothing, it has been calculated that Bill Gates makes $2500.00 a SECOND!
By this reasoning, he would never even click on this link, in fact, it would not even be worth his time to pick up a $100.00 bill if someone dropped it in front of him.

Re:Is your time worth $2700 a minute? Bill Gates'

[Anonymous Coward]

well if he make $2500 a second and it takes him one second to pick up a $100 bill. He just made 2600 dollars that second. It is a fallacy that he would lose money by stopping to pick up a $100 bill. Bill gates is not penalized by wasting time.

Re:Is your time worth $2700 a minute? Bill Gates'

[digitaldc]

Bill gates is not penalized by wasting time.

Yes, but he could wrench his back doing that, and that might prevent him from attending Vista's launch party - which is worth more to him than money itself.

Re:Is your time worth $2700 a minute?

[eric_brissette]

Yes, and I would like a notification when any story uses includes css, javascript, images, flash, embedded movies of any kind, or frames (inline or otherwise).

Seriously though, Flash Video (FLV) really is a pretty good video codec for the web. I'd take it over RM, WMV, or MOV any day.

Re:Flash required

[Sabaki]

I was just talking about Runaway yesterday when I was watching footage of another creepy robot.

Welcome to the future!

Re:Flash required

[Eightyford]

It would be nice if submitters would warn people when Flash is required so those of us who don't bother with that nonsense wouldn't waste our time.

Flash is the new video format. The summary says it is a video, so what formats should you be warned about? Just flash?

Re:Flash required

[stanmann]

Flash is a video format in the exact same way as WMF is an image format, they are container objects, most commonly used to hold that sort of data.

Re:Flash required

[smooth wombat]

Flash is the new video format.

And that's the problem right there. There is no need to embed videos using flash. Stick up an mpeg file and let whatever program the person wants to display the video. The summary says video and I'm thinking QT, WMV or the aformentioned mpeg. Not Flash.

It was/is bad enough that some moron thought it would be a good idea to use Flash as the main page of a web site thus blocking people who use screen readers from accessing the site. Now they seem to think it's easie

Re:Flash required

[ComputerizedYoga]

Flash in and of itself is both harmless, and a huge problem solver for the embedded-video issue.

It's misuses of flash, in the context of the broken IE ActiveX model that open at least one set of floodgates for spyware.

And there's such mind-boggling headaches getting people to be able to reliably play video in any other format. Post a .mov, and now I've gotta sell my soul to apple to play it on a winbox, and what do I do about an embedded mov in linux?

WMV will draw the linux crowd's ire, too ... and doesn't

Re:Flash required

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm old enough to have been on Usenet before the web was even around, I remember discussions at the time when people would post http:/// [http] links saying that they should have been warning beforehand because most people were assuming ftp file access at the time.

Re:Flash required

[daddymac]

A movie starring Tom Selleck, Cynthia Rhodes, Kirstie Alley and Gene Simmons seems like more of a waste of time to me, but here [bostondynamics.com] is the video in wmf format from the manufacturer's site.

Re:Would you rather it be QuickTime or WMV?!

[vertinox]

It would be nice if submitters would warn people when Flash is required so those of us who don't bother with that nonsense wouldn't waste our time.

What the heck do you want it in?

Chances are if it is flash, it is more compatible than Quicktime or WMV. I don't like installing Quicktime on my PC and forget the WMV player on my mac (yeah there is one but it hardly works).

Maybe some obscure codec no one has heard of that requires a download, then?

Seriously what do you use for your videos?

I bet half the people t

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

[MaWeiTao]

Why exactly do you say that?

Sure Japanese have developed some impressive robots, but I wouldn't call something like the ballroom dancing robot a great feat of technology. Japanese designers seem to go for flashy robots, putting immense effort in creating something that has little practical utility but creates quite a stir. One company developed a humanoid robot and then we see dozens of companies cloning the original concept.

The ones developed in the US and Europe tend to be developed for real world applications. They don't look pretty, but they get the job done, solving a specific challenge in the process.

Not to discredit what the Japanese are doing, as they certainly are innovating too, but there's no reason to put down this work just because it doesn't look like Honda's ASIMO.

Pleasure...

[garyr_h]

The ballroom dancing box is just foreplay for the sex bot.

Re:Pleasure... But, can it climb the hell out of

[davidsyes]

trees AND say "Gooney GOOGOO!"?

Re:Pleasure... But, can it climb the hell out of

[davidsyes]

AHh, my man, but to quote it near-properly... u gotta yell it out like:

"HLILLIUN!!! Da BITCH is fallin' outta TREES AGAIN!!!" hehehehe

Ohh.. man... so "brutiful", Damn! If I hadn't polished off the last my Thrifty's brand stuff last night, I could have taunted you with, "I-I-I got summm I-I-ce CREE-EEM. I got su-uh-uhm IYYCE-CREAM. YOO don't HA'E NONE. Cuz YOO CAN'T AFFOD-T. 'Cuz YOH- dad's an alcoHOLic; and yo' famly's ohnn WELfare... Ice-cream Ice-cream Ice-Cream... HA!!!!

heheheh....

Well.. Guess I gotta sa

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

You are kidding, right? Think about the movement required for a SIX-legged robot to climb a tree and the kind of AI you'd need for this to occur. Now, keeping that in mind, go see Asimo run.

This kind of nonsense shouldn't be tagged insightful.

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

[Vapon]

Little practicality? I can see quite a few uses for a robot that can climb vertical walls and trees, that is small enough to go inside vents etc,,,

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

[Schmendr1ck]

Actually, I *would* call a ballroom dancing robot technologically impressive. It is very difficult to accurately mimic human physiology and movement in a robot. We consider walking on two legs to be simple (and for most people it is), but it is very challenging to develop robust bipedal movement in an artificial system, either real-world or simulated.

The difference between a bomb-disarming robot and a ballroom dancing robot is that the former is focused on practicality, while the latter is focused on sh

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

[bermudatriangleoflov]

They seem to make useless ones, however. An example being a robot that kicks a soccer ball or plays ping pong. Thats great and all, but a robot that can:

1. Disarm a bomb
2. Climb a tree
3. Drive cross country without a driver
4. Recognize the expressions on a human face

all seem to have more real world applications and were developed right here in the US. Real world applications will drive the technology and funding for practical and useful robots IMO.

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

[PitaBred]

So, the AI lessons in making a robot react CORRECTLY to a ping-pong ball have absolutely no relationship to things like #3? They're solving 'problems' while gaining massive leaps in understanding. Even if their end result isn't immediately useful, the lessons they learn from it are.

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

[bermudatriangleoflov]

A robot that can kick my ass in tennis will still not necessarily "understand" that it has kicked my ass :)

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

[PitaBred]

Ha-ha. Sorry, by "they" I meant the researchers, specifically the Japanese in this case ;)

The answer is a resounding Sort Of.....

[technoextreme]

So, the AI lessons in making a robot react CORRECTLY to a ping-pong ball have absolutely no relationship to things like #3? They're solving 'problems' while gaining massive leaps in understanding. Even if their end result isn't immediately useful, the lessons they learn from it are.

There are two main different ways that a robot can be programed. These two methods are deterministic and behavioral/reactionary. Each method is very very different in the way it handle different scenarios. Deterministic beha

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

[mopslik]

5. Find Sarah Connor.

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

[Anthem.uxp]

I see your bomb-disarming, tree-climbing, cross-country-driving and expression-recognizing bot and raise you a hundred japanese grenade soccer bots. Let's see who wins this round :)

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

[PFI_Optix]

The bomb-lobbing cricket-playing robots, of course.

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

[2names]

FWOOP!

Re:Tree climbing robot for space exploration!

[XenoRyet]

Climbing a vertical surface shares similarities with clinging to an astroid with very little gravity, both can be bad when you let go.