WASHINGTON: Researchers at the University of California Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab have developed a very small, cockroach-like robot that can help a robotic bird to take flight without any human help.
The robot named VelociRoACH was developed by the researchers at the University of California at Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab. The lab aims to mimic the ways animals sense the world around them and move about in very small robots, also called millibots.
Engineers were able to use hexapedal robot called VelociRoACH as a sort of aircraft carrier for the so-called ornithopter micro-aerial vehicle, named H2Bird.
VelociRoACH can rush along most terrains at speed up to 16 feet per second. It was strapped to a harness carrying H2Bird, which it tosses into the air after a running start.
The transport cost of the VelociRoACH is decreased by approximately 16% if the H2Bird is placed on top of it.
This decrease in the cost of transport would be useful in a situation where both had to reach a point 80 meters away and the H2Bird had to fly 20 meters in the air, unreachable by VelociRoACH.
In these situations, cooperative locomotion would be more efficient than independent locomotion.
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