A hitchhiker's guide through water and air The ultrafast transition from underwater drone to aerial vehicle in less than one second is based on a new propeller design – making this transition between the different mediums faster than most prior aerial-aquatic robots. Designed by a team of scientists from China, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, the versatile robot and its bio-inspired adhesive disc could be adapted for open-environment aerial and aquatic surveillance research. Travelling with whales It’s well known that untethered drones can help research expeditions and wildlife surveys in expansive or remote environments such as the open sea, but some constraints remain. For example, untethered drones are not the best choice to use during lengthier missions because they h...
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Steep sections on slippery ground, high steps, scree and forest trails full of roots: the path up the 1,098-metre-high Mount Etzel at the southern end of Lake Zurich is peppered with numerous obstacles. But ANYmal, the quadrupedal robot from the Robotic Systems Lab at ETH Zurich, overcomes the 120 vertical metres effortlessly in a 31-minute hike. That’s 4 minutes faster than the estimated duration for human hikers – and with no falls or missteps. This is made possible by a new control technology, which researchers at ETH Zurich led by robotics professor Marco Hutter recently presented in the journal Science Robotics. “The robot has learned to combine visual perception of its environment with proprioception – its sense of touch – based on direct leg contact. This allows it to tack...
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