1. Cutting-Edge Unmanned Technology
This Cockroach Robot Could Run
Through the Rubble to Your Rescue
By Chantelle Polite
Although they are so tiny, cockroaches have proven them-
selves to be one of the most successful critters on our planet,
having survived over 300 million years as a species. Part of
what makes them so resourceful is their ability to squeeze
through extremely tiny cracks and crevices - one-tenth of an
inch crevices to be exact - and travel at high speeds while
flattened into half their size.
University of California Berkeley scientists have not only
confirmed this unpleasant fact but have now used this resil-
ience to invent a cockroach-inspired robot that can rapidly
squeeze through cracks - a new search-and-rescue method
in rubble resulting from tornados, earthquakes and explosions.
UC Berkeley study leader Kaushik Jayam found that
roaches traversing cervices can withstand forces 900 times
their body weight without injury. Using this technique as
inspiration, Jayam designed a simple palm-sized robot called
CRAM (Compressible Robot with Articulated Mechanisms)
that can splay its legs outward when squashed. He then
capped it with a plastic shield similar to the tough, smooth
wings that cover the back of a cockroach.
"What's impressive about these cockroaches is that they
can run as fast through a quarter-inch gap as a half-inch gap
by reorienting their legs completely out to the side," Jayam
says. "They're about half an inch tall when they run freely, but
can squish their bodies to one-tenth of an inch - the height
of two stacked pennies."
52 I UNMANNED SYSTEMS I APRIL 2016
The CRAM robot can squeeze through tight spaces
using the same locomotive methods as a real cock-
roach, meaning it could assess parts of a search-and-
rescue mission that other robots could not.
Roaches' ability to use different body parts to move in
small spaces could possibly change the way we use robots
to search through debris and rubble as a result of natural
disasters.
"In the event of an earthquake, first responders need to
know if an area of rubble is stable and safe, but the challenge
is, most robots can 't get into the rubble," says Robert Full,
a professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley. "But there
are lots of cracks and vents and conduits. You can imagine
just throwing a swarm of these robots in to locate survivors
and safe entry points for first responders."
Full and his students in his lab have been studying how
animals walk, run, jump, glide and crawl to apply these move-
ments to that of newly designed robots over the past three
decades. Jayram specifically studied roaches running at nearly
full speed between quarter-inch spaced plates, using a high-
speed camera. Each of their findings combined have aided
in robot testing, and it even led to a new mode of locomotion
for the roaches' movements they refer to as "body frictional
legged crawling with drag on the body," since thrust by the
legs is dominated by friction but there is no drag from flowing
media such as air, water or sand.
Jayram is now testing all parts of the cockroach's body
to determine their mechanical properties and their role in
cockroach's mobility.