They run, crawl, slither, fly, and jump. They’re also robots. Fueled by funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and other public and private organizations, researchers at labs nationwide are developing a new generation of military robots. Inspired by designs already perfected by nature, these robots are helping military units accomplish missions with less risk to soldiers and civilians.
Joseph Ayers, principal investigator of the Biomimetic Underwater Robot Program at Northeastern University’s Marine Science Center, notes that animal physiology and behavior are inspiring robot developers to take military robotics to the next level. “Even the simplest animals outperform any known robot, especially in autonomous operations,” says Ayers. “Animals have performance advantages, and we’re trying to capture these advantages in an engineered solution.”
Ayers’ personal goal is to create a robotic lobster that may someday be used by the U.S. Navy to detonate marine explosives. “The process that a lobster goes through when it searches for food is exactly the same process you would want one to go through to search for underwater mines,” he says.
Ayers isn’t alone in his belief that animalinspired robots are destined to assist or replace soldiers and civilians in a variety of dangerous tasks. “The human is becoming the weakest link,” DARPA warned last year in an unclassified report. “Sustaining and augmenting human performance will have significant impact on Defense missions and systems.”
Yet as researchers strive to create robots that mimic the action of different kinds of realworld creatures, with the goal of removing soldiers from potentially dangerous environments and situations, critics are questioning the basic concept of robot-driven, risk-free warfare.
“The whole field poses a dilemma,” says Noel Sharkey, a professor of artificial intelligence, robotics, and public engagement at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. Sharkey notes that it’s the moral duty of any commander to protect the welfare of his soldiers. “But the problem is, if it’s risk-free war to one side, can that be a just war?”
A nation that feels there’s no risk in engaging an enemy, says Sharkey, may be more inclined to use force to solve its problems. Still, despite the criticism, there’s no sign that the military or any of its funded researchers are feeling any moral qualms about their goals. As Ayers notes, “It’s better to lose a robot than a person.”
MAIN LOBSTER
Besides being tasty, lobsters are remarkable creatures. They can crawl along the ocean bed almost continuously for up to 100 years, hunting with powerful claws and performing various other activities in places were visibility is often close to zero. Using funds provided by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Ayers’ submersible robot is designed to use a lobster’s best features to perform dangerous underwater tasks for the military. “It’s designed to eliminate the risk to humans,” he says.
Ayers’ Biomimetic Underwater Robot, unofficially dubbed “RoboLobster,” can move in any direction and wiggle and squirm, just like a real lobster (Fig. 1). Weighing about seven pounds and measuring approximately two feet long, it’s also about the same size as its living counterpart.
Biomimetic robots like RoboLobster are designed to be small, agile, and relatively cheap, particularly when viewed in the light of saving people from injury and death. The systems rely on electronic nervous systems, sensors, and novel actuators. Perhaps most importantly, biomimetic devices take direct advantage of capabilities that have already been proven in animals for dealing with real-world situations in unique environments.
In the case of RoboLobster, the system can even be adapted to improve upon nature. The robot can, for example, be built with “claws” created out of explosives, designed for use in a suicide mine-detonation mission. “Typical mines that are used in underwater warfare are 500-pound aerially dropped bombs,” says Ayers. “No one is going to go in and pick that up and carry that away. All you can do is to detonate it in place.”
RoboLobster is one of the first robots to use artificial muscle. Known as NITINOL, it lets the robot move around easily at depths of up to 40 Naval Ordnance Laboratory) is a family of intermetallic materials that contain a nearly equal mixture of nickel and titanium.
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