The ODIN modular robot doing random motion

There are mainly two things to note in this video. First, that this robot is built from a set of heterogeneous modules: black cylindrical modules provide actuation, the white spheres work as connectors, and finally the white cylindrical ones just provide structure. We could easily have connected them in a completely different way and built another robot! Second, that in the connectors we have built-in springs that gives the system the flexibility that makes the movements look more natural.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ODIN
• modular
• robot
• heterogeneous

[mrlusd]

The mechatronics was developed at University of Southern Denmark. Basically, the idea is that it is built from 14 modules with different functionalities. E.g. some provide power, some actuation, and some communication, etc... so you can built a robot from robotic "cells" similar to the way multi-cellular organisms are built. The video is a demonstration we put together to show that this multi-cellular robotic organism actually works

[tavit111]

what is has to do with university of souther Denmark?

[rimen05]

@rev087

Hi. The actuators are Maxon motors driving a telescopic mechanism following the same principle of lens of digital cameras. In our webpage we have a paper explaining this mechanism in detail.

Regards, Franco.

[Iulik2012]

WTF?



[rev087]

I'm a complete newbie to robotics, but I'm still intrigued. What kind of actuator are in those black cilinders? Are they simple solenoids?

[LehdaRi]

I prefer the MTRAN 3 desing. It has only a one kind of elements and it's able to change its form by itself.

[Vrexin]

nilsonberger2's response sounds very likely

[nilsonberger2]

this is probably just an example of what they are trying to do with evolutionary robotics. they are probably trying to have the robot figure out the best way to move forward on its own, and to do this the robot must go through trial and error, which is what this video probably is.

[KingWJTube]

i don't get the point