Today's Engineering Newswire looks at raising cage-free robots, flying SkyOrbiters in Siberia, and swimming with the Octobot.
Cage-Free Robots: The world of collaborative robots came alive at IMTS 2014 when the six-day long international technology marathon took over McCormick Place in Chicago. What stood out to me was Danish robot manufacturer Universal Robots, which was showing off its third generation of collaborative UR5 and UR10 robot arms. Trick is, they didn’t have the traditional barrier protecting the public from the work cell.
SkyOrbiter UAVs Give Internet to Everyone: Quarkson plans to use unmanned aerial vehicles to transmit internet access to every inch of the planet. These unmanned vehicles, known as SkyOrbiters, are capable of flying for extremely long periods of time without landing or refueling.
The largest member of the fleet, the SkyOrbiter HA75 operates at 22,000 meters with a 75 meter wingspan. And it can fly for 5 years, covering 5 million km without stopping.
Octobot Takes Queues from Nature: The Octobot is an 8-arm compliant robot that moves by combining various patterns of sculling movements of the arms and web. It can reach speeds of up to 0.5 body lengths per second, or about 180 millimeters per second, achieving propulsive forces of up to 10.5 N.
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