The University of of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been running a BEAM-style mechatronics program (GE100) for the last few years. The purpose of the class is to build a self-powered device that can propel itself over both smooth and rough terrain, using a pair of servos and a BEAM-style servo-controller circuit (similar in function to […]
Frogbots! Solar-powered, at that!
Dave Hrynkiw
December 15, 2000
I missed the full segment of this story last weeks on "Discovery Channel's @discovery.ca" program, but fortunately, the've put the segment online at their website. I seems that JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratories - NASA essentially) is working on a solar-powered, single-footed robot frog. This seems like a GREAT idea for extra-terrestrial planet-surface locomotion. Check out the videos and see for yourself. Additional information at Space.com Even more technical information is here and here, in these Adobe Acrobat files from one of the researchers, Paulo Fiorini. Here's his homepage. And this is his dedicated Frogbot hompage - lots of interesting info!
Oh, and if you scroll to the bottom of the Discovery Channel / EXN page, you'll find a nice video clip of our favorite Roboticist, Mark Tilden. They shot this a few years ago, and I'm glad to see they resurrected it to be on this page.
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