Tag Archives: chimp

Carnegie Mellon’s Chimp robot is reporting for duty, sir

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Carnegie Mellon's Chimp robot is reporting for duty, sir

See that guy? He's for real. He's also from Pittsburgh. A team of wizards from Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center is presently building a new "human-scale" robot in order to compete in DARPA's Robotics Challenge. Part of its charm revolves around the rubberized tracks on its feet as well as on the extremities of each of its four limbs -- not surprisingly, these are engineered to help it maneuver in some pretty sticky situations.

According to the institution, it'll move much link a tank, but it'll also be able to chug along on the treads of just two limbs when needed, such as when it must use one or more limbs to open a valve, or to operate power tools. Oh, and in case you're curious, CMU has affirmed that it'll "be able to perform complex, physically challenging tasks through supervised autonomy," which sounds precisely like the kind of vague description an ill-willed robot would explain to its master before completely taking over his / her life. Just sayin'.

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Via: Technabob, Geekosystem

Source: Carnegie Mellon

CHIMP “Humanoid” Rescue Robot to Climb Ladders, Transform into a Tank

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Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are working on a rescue robot that can take on both humanoid and tank forms like a Transformer. No word on whether it is a Decepticon or an Autobot. It’s called CHIMP (CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform) and it can work like a human (or monkey) when it needs to climb a ladder and such. But if the terrain gets rough, it can drop onto all fours, switch on its motorized treads, and become a tank.

chimp robot climbing

In that form CHIMP can traverse disaster areas and seek out survivors. The robot is being developed by CMU for the DARPA Robotics Challenge. The goal of the Robotics Challenge is to take disaster response robots to the next level, making them capable of doing just about anything a human can do.

chimp robot

As part of the challenge, robots must be able to do everything from driving across rubble, to climbing a ladder, to breaking through concrete, to repairing a leaking pipe.

chimp robot 3

The key to this is flexibility. Sometimes two legs are better, other times four is what you need. I can’t wait to see where this goes. Thankfully, it will be some time yet before these flexible bots enslave us.

[via Geekosystem]