A-Pod

It’s a hexapod robot.  Extremely agile walking robot. Looks like a large ant.  Built with some custom parts and parts from Trossen Robotics.  This thing is amazing!

A-Pod is an ant inspired hexapod robot with a 2 DOF abdomen (tail), a 3 DOF head with large mandibles. 6 legs with 3 DOF each. Total 25 servos. This video demonstrates body movement and mandible control. I still have to do some mechanical improvements to the legs (therefore little walking). The robot are remotely controlled with a custom 2,4 GHz RC transmitter.

HyDRAS-Ascent (Hyper-redundant Discrete Robotic Articulated Serpentine) robot.

“Unlike inchworm type gaits often being developed for serpentine robot locomotion, this novel climbing gait requires the serpentine robot to wrap around the structure in a helical shape, and twist its whole body to climb or descend by rolling up or down the structure,” said Hong.

This robot is designed to climb up and down poles.  There is talk of using this robot in the construction industry, to climb scaffolding and such of large buildings, and do visual inspections.

HyDRAS was created by the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory of the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech.  They won the 2008 International Capstone Design Fair with this design.

Dean Kamen’s robotic “Luke” arm.

And finally, some more information on the robotic prosthetic arm from DEKA (Dean Kamen’s company.  Dean Kamen is the gentleman that started FIRST).

There is an excellent video of Dean at the TED.  He was asked by the Department of Defense to create a new prosthetic arm, and this is his answer.  The video clip is approximately 5 minutes.

Here is another video showing the arm in testing.