FUTURE IS HERE, THE

Muse, Jan 2009 by Smith, Wes

Where would you go to find real-life counterparts of WALL-E, Iron Man, and the Transformers?

Try Florida.

Robots rule at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Pensacola, Florida. There, top scientists and engineers from around the world are creating and refining robots and other machines that help humans become stronger, faster, smarter, and safer.

Unlike their cartoon and comic book cousins, real-world robots were, until recently, mostly limited to stationary machines used in industry. Automobile companies such as General Motors, for example, use immobile robots on their assembly lines to put parts in their cars.

In the last five years or so, faster, more powerful microchip processors have converged with technologies such as Wi-Fi, 3D image processing, and improved software, microcontrollers, batteries, sensors, and video cameras to inspire a new generation of mobile and even wearable robots. The new mobile robots use the Internet to communicate information, laser beams to measure distances, and SLAM technology (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) to map and track their own positions.

"All of these technologies are racing forward and getting better and better, which has created a resurgence of interest in robots for business, the military, the home, and hobbyists, too," says Tom Atwood, editor in chief of Robot magazine.

DANGEROUS JOBS

Many of the robots conceived of or fine-tuned at the IHMC are meant to perform tasks that would be difficult or dangerous for humans, such as robots created for military missions, called warbots.

A company called QinetiQ North America has shipped more than 2,000 TALON military robots to help American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. These mobile robots have been used on more than 3,000 missions, mostly to help search for and dispose of live grenades and hidden roadside bombs. A weapon version of the TALON robot, the SWORD, can be armed with rifles and shotguns.

More than 160 of these robots have been blown up on the job in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly all of them were reassembled at one of four robot hospitals for warbots in those two countries.

Police departments and home security companies in Los Angeles and other cities around the country are using similar robots to search for bombs and explosives, which protects police officers and firefighters from harm.

Several other types of warbots are already in use or under development. Combatbots and spybots are unmanned vehicles that can drive or fly into dangerous areas. Supportbots carry supplies to troops in the field.

A Massachusetts research lab, Vecna Technologies, is working to help American soldiers with its superstrong BEAR robot. This Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot, which is still being tested, is designed to find, lift, and carry wounded or hurt soldiers to safety. It will even be able to travel up stairs and over rough terrain for long distances.

Robots that evacuate injured soldiers, like BEAR, are called medbots. Wounded soldiers rescued by medbots might be operated on by robots like the four-armed Da Vinci Surgical System. While Da Vinci holds the surgical tools, a doctor uses controllers to make small, precise movements with Da Vinci's arms. This lets doctors perform minimally invasive operations so patients can recover more quickly.

ALL-TERRAIN CANINE

One of the primary bot projects underway at the Pensacola institute is LittleDog, a robotics research program funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. This is the pup version of BigDog, a pony-sized four-legged robot made by Boston Dynamics. Powered by a gasoline engine, BigDog walks, runs, climbs and "can even jump like a gazelle over barriers," according to Atwood, the Robot magazine editor.

IHMC scientists are competing with others across the country to program LittleDog so that it can learn to walk over rough terrain like rocks and boulders even better than BigDog can. That may not seem like as neat a trick as, say, catching a Frisbee or even fetching a stick, but LittleDog's all-terrain mobility has important implications, according to its "trainer" Jerry Pratt, a mechanical engineer.

Today's high-tech robots have many super skills. Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft, for example, can fly at 60,000 feet and secretly capture images from below. Yet when it comes to mobility on the ground, most robots have been clunkers, Pratt said. Only a few, such as BigDog, can climb over curbs or negotiate rocks or steep slopes in rugged areas like the desert dunes of Iraq or the mountainous regions of Afghanistan.

Crossing a rocky yard might seem easy for you, but it takes many hours of computer programming and mechanical engineering to keep a robot on track, even when it has four feet. "We are writing programs so LittleDog can look ahead and consider where it can place its feet, much the same way a chess player looks ahead considering which moves he can make," Pratt said. "Right now the robot can cross gaps, climb stairs, go over rocks, and up and down slopes. But LittleDog's eyes are not on its body! Instead, we have six overhead cameras that see where the robot is walking.