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May 21, 2012
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May 17, 2012
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May 16, 2012
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May 15, 2012
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May 14, 2012
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May 11, 2012
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The Kosher Gourmet by Chef Mario Batali: The famed chef's vegetable dish that tastes true to the season: FAVAS AND SUGAR SNAP PEAS WITH POTATOES AND TARRAGON
May 10, 2012
Sergei L. Loiko: Putin sends warning to U.S., NATO in Victory Day speech at Red Square
Mary Rourke: How being a 'mentch' got Vidal Sasoon his start and fighting in Israel's War of Independence provided him with confidence and a strong sense of his own identity
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May 9, 2012
Sharon Palmer, R.D. How you can reduce your risk -- or delay -- chronic diseases associated with aging
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Jewish World Review
Leaping lizards! Tiny reptiles advancing robot design
By
Suzanne Bohan
|  A red-headed African Agama lizard in action |
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Engineers have too long been stuck in human-centric designs for automatons, argue scientists
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | (MCT)
The brilliant acrobatics of leaping lizards
could inspire the creation of a army of nimble robots able to swarm
through collapsed buildings or mines to find survivors, researchers at
the University of California, Berkeley, say.
By scrutinizing slow-motion video of a redheaded African lizard, the
Berkeley team saw how the creature gyrated its tail to right itself
after stumbling off a slippery surface. Despite the faltering start,
it nailed a four-footed landing on a wall.
If a robot could be designed to do that, newly agile machines could
take the lead in search and rescue operations.
This latest research from the lab of Robert Full, a UC Berkeley
integrative biologist, for the first time shows how engineers could
copy nature's design to create mobile machines that actually jump from
floors to walls.
"We didn't know how to do that, and now we do," Full said.
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Full and his students added a gyroscopically controlled tail to a
lizard-sized vehicle they dubbed "Tailbot." When graduate student
Thomas Libby dropped Tailbot face down, it righted itself in midair.
"Anything we can do to make a robot more stable is an advancement,
which is why this work is so exciting," Libby said.
Search-and-rescue robots were first used after the 9/11 attacks to
explore rubble at the World Trade Center, and they've been used after
mine collapses, earthquakes and hurricanes since then. But the present
generation is primitive compared to what's in designers' minds.
"There's nothing available that's agile enough to get in there
quickly," Full said. "The mobility is limited."
Engineers have too long been stuck in human-centric designs for
robots, Full said.
Creatures that crawl, race and dangle hold the keys to creating
machines that can navigate over chunks of collapsed buildings, dig
through dense rubble or hop onto walls or ledges, he said.
Close study of critters from geckos and cockroaches to centipedes and
lizards has produced insights into agility, driving innovation in
robot design.
"We as biologists have to stay ahead of the game and provide the
inspiration for the next capacity of the robot," Full said.
In 2000, Full's team found that the half-million tiny hairs on each
foot of a gecko create a fleeting glue-like bond that enables its
swift scampering up walls. That led to a prototype gecko-like robot
that can climb on any surface, he said. "But it's not quite
commercially available," Full said. Nor can it leap onto the wall
before its fast ascent.
The work in Full's lab and several others like it around the country
are critical for driving advances, said Robin Murphy, director of the
Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue at Texas A&M University.
This latest research from Full's team will be published in Thursday's
issue of Nature.
"This is very, very novel," Murphy said, describing both the discovery
that a tail is critical for next-generation robot design, and in
modeling nature to program how robots move.
And she expects the pace of research, particularly mimicking animal
movement in robotics, will lead to an explosion of innovation in the
coming decade.
"I think in 10 years when you turn on CNN and there's a disaster, if
you don't see a robot in there you'll be thinking 'What's up with
that?'" Murphy said. "They're going to be so common."
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© 2012, Contra Costa Times Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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