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Here is the Otherlab’s 15 foot inflatable walking robot, the Ant-Roach.  We thought this conceptual elephant looked more like a cross between an anteater and a cockroach.  The goal of building the Ant-Roach was to demonstrate the carrying capacity and high strength-to-weight ratios possible with inflatable structures.

Comments November 21, 2011 by Travis Deyle of Hizook – see original article here.

"I'm really excited about inflatable robots… they have the potential to be low-cost, lightweight, extremely powerful, and yet "human safe" — ie. perfect for many robotics applications.  With that in mind, I would like to introduce you to two new (breakout) inflatable robots: a 15-foot-long walking robot (a Pneubot named Ant-Roach) and a complete, inflatable robot arm (plus hand).  Both of these robots were developed by Otherlab as part of their "pneubotics" project (in collaboration with Meka Robotics and Manu Prakash at Stanford University), with some funding from DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program.    These robots use textile-based, inflatable actuators that contract upon inflation into specially-designed shapes to effect motion.   Since these robots are built out of lightweight fabric-and-air structural members and powered via pneumatics or hydraulics, they exhibit large strength-to-weight ratios.  For example, Ant-Roach is less than 70 lbs and can probably support up to 1000 lbs; the inflatable robot arm is less than 2 lbs and can lift a few hundred pounds at 50-60 psi.  Be sure to read on for details and lots of videos!"

Picture above shows Pete Lynn hefting the whole thing.

The muscles are textile-based actuators which contract upon inflation.  The picture above shows a stack of them during construction.

The muscles are driven from several central manifolds which dispense compressed air.

All pictures and captions sourced from Otherlabs webpage unless noted otherwise. See Otherlabs webpage and other videos here.

See other Pneumatic, Fluidic, and Inflatable robots here.

Otherlab's prototype articulated inflatable robot arm,  is apparently able to lift a person with 50-60 psi even though it weighs only 2 pounds.

All pictures and captions sourced from Otherlabs webpage unless noted otherwise. See Otherlabs webpage and other videos here.

See other Pneumatic, Fluidic, and Inflatable robots here.

Siddharth Sanand: is doing his PhD at the Robotics Institute at CMU. He is interested in making robots soft and safe to enable physical human robot interaction. On the other side, he has been sewing together various ideas on inflatable robots and actuators.  Recently interned at Otherlab.

All pictures and captions sourced from Otherlabs webpage unless noted otherwise. See Otherlabs webpage and other videos here.

See other Pneumatic, Fluidic, and Inflatable robots here.

Pneubot stands for "pneumatic robot", or a robot that is actuated by pneumatic technology. A pneumatic technology involves the use of compressed air to drive mechanical motion. The compressed air can be moved through soft, balloon-like tubes, which allows for both rigidity (when filled) and flexibility (when decompressed or empty). In this video, an elephant-shaped pneubot is used to demonstrate the level of motor control allowed using this technology.

MAKE #27
Pneubotics: Walking Bouncy Castles
By Saul Griffith

Sometimes I feel like a false nerd, or a geek with two important genes missing: I’m not particularly interested in space exploration, except as fiction, and I’ve never cared for robots. So I find it strange that I’m now working on a Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) robotics program.

I think what I never liked about robots is that they’re complex machines that really don’t do much. They’re fragile and very expensive. I like simple, robust things; things that don’t cost more than they should.

What I’ve found myself working on (with Jack Bachrach, Geoffrey Irving, Pete Lynn, and the good guys from Meka Robotics) is completely soft, completely compliant, very lightweight, and very cheap. No joints. No servos. Just skins — inflated skins.

For a long while I’ve been fascinated by inflatable objects for their extreme strength-to-weight ratios (they can carry a lot of load for very little mass). I also love the challenge of designing something “human safe,” in the robotics lexicon. Biology doesn’t use metal, and it doesn’t use servos. Nature points to some very interesting alternatives.

To make it work, we had to invent a new kind of actuator. Think of it as a vascular system for robots. It’s fluidic — works equally well with air or water — and by pumping either of those around, you can change the dimensions of the skin and effect motion. Our first actuator was quite literally a bicycle inner tube in a sewn pair of membranes. It worked really well for a $5 prototype!

For the next trial, I asked my sister to return an inflatable 4-foot-high elephant I’d designed and given to my niece. When it arrived, Pete burned the midnight oil and sewed up some vascular “muscles,” and in a day or two we had four moving legs. It actually walked. About one mile every 24 hours, but hey — baby’s first steps! It moves like no machine you’ve ever seen; more like the way biology moves. A walking inflatable elephant might sound ridiculous, but it works, and the numbers on paper told us it should have incredible strength, good speed, extremely low weight, and cost very, very little to manufacture.

The next prototype was designed to walk with a human rider on it and to look less like an elephant. We built it in under a week for less than $1,000 in parts. A 15-foot-long, 5-foothigh robot with 28 muscle actuators (four in each of six legs, another four in the trunk). It worked too (after a few exploded actuators).

I like the idea of a robot you can sew together. I like that it has no heavy, sharp, or costly parts. Most of all, I like the intellectual challenges of it. There aren’t any CAD packages for designing highly elastic kinetic membrane structures. We had to write our own. There aren’t any analysis simulations. We had to write our own. There aren’t any walking bouncy castles out there. We built our own! We call our weird new style of robotics “pneubotics,” as in pneu for air (like pneumatic).

Who knows if the robotics community will like it or even care. Either way, that’s not why I built it. I built it because perhaps my niece will forgive me if she gets a walking elephant next Christmas that she can ride to school.

All pictures and captions sourced from Otherlabs webpage unless noted otherwise. See Otherlabs webpage and other videos here.

OtherLab is a collective of scientists and inventors involved in a number of projects, including proof-of-concept mechatronics that might be useful in building functionally adaptive and intelligent machines.

See other Pneumatic, Fluidic, and Inflatable robots here.

The Kaufmann Trumpeter had leather bellows for lungs and reeds which imitated the sound of a brass instrument.

The Kaufmann family from Dresden. Friedrich id on the right. 

Text incorrectly dates the 'Robot' from 1910, it should be 1810. 

[Source: Popular Mechanics Aug 1950]

Trompeter

This is an example of a program (e.g. stepped drum) mounted into an automata to play a tune, like the European street organs. The notches mounted on the drum activated valves that let the air pass by 12 tongues. Which produced a kind of modulated sound. This sound will be modulated through a trumpet so it does sound like a trumpet The stepped drum and the bellows are powered by a spring mechanism that need to be wound up, observe the crank laying at the bottom. The height of this automata is apr. 180 cm.

From the Illustrated London News July 5, 1851. The centrepiece is Kaufmann's magnificent Orchestrion.

[Source: Clockwork Music, Ord-Hume]

The Trumpet Automaton is a figure not unlike Mario in the " Puritani," with the instrument at its mouth. It was invented many years ago by Herr Kaufmann, and won the admiration of Carl Maria Von Weber. What is most remarkable and inconceivable in this extraordinary piece of mechanism, is, that it produces double sounds of equal strength and purity, and flourishes in octaves, tierces, quints, Re., are heard. Perhaps this acoustic curiosity may supply some key to Vivier's wondrous horn effects, certain notes accompanying particular chords. If this discovery should be established, that one instrument can do the same with equal perfection as two instruments, it may lead to something, as natural intonation may surely effect what a piece of machinery can do…….To construct such instruments without models, for they are quite original, the maker must be a musician, a mechanic, a mathematician, and a philosopher.

[Source: Clockwork Music - Ord-Hume]

Carl Maria Von Weber

By John Hamilton Warrack 

He also paid a visit on his friend Friedrich Kaufmann, whose latest nvention was a mechanical trumpeter in Spanish costume which played two simultaneous notes at set times.(2)

(2) Subsequently this Hoffmannesque creature went off unexpectedly, knocking Kaufmann sensless and blinding him in one eye. Thereafter Weber took leasure in speaking of the trumpeter's sinister powers with his voice lowered.

The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : Wednesday 2 August 1933 page 3

NOTES

Hobart Concert Orchestra,

The Hobart Concert Orchestra, under Mr. David Feirclough, is busy rehearsing tor the next concert a programme of music never performed in Hobart before. It will include an Adagio and Rondo written in 1821 by Carl Marla von Weber for Friedrich Kaufmann, of Dresden, whose, Acoustic Cabinet had aroused the composer's interest to such a degree that he wrote a pamphlet for the purpose of directing the attention of wider circles to the triumphs of craftsmanship shown there, including a trumpeter playing his instrument. But more than by the musical automatons the interest of the master was captured by the harmonichord, invented by Kaufmann in 1810, and the forerunner of the
harmonium. As independent as the organ or the pianoforte, it allowed the player to utter his thoughts and feelings most effectively. With the eye of genius Webér recognised the capacity and character of the new instrument, and saw that it must have a future. Fully worthy of Weber and a model for later composers is the style that delights the hearer of the "Adagio and Rondo for the Harmonichord (Harmonium) with accompaniment of the orchestra."
 

Enchanted wanderer: the life of Carl Maria von Weber

Lucy Poate Stebbins, Richard Poate Stebbins – 1940 – 345 pages

In Dresden, Weber inspected the workshop of his Munich acquaintance, Friedrich Kaufmann, who had invented a mechanical trumpet which would play two notes at once "so clear and equal in volume that one would swear he heard two trumpets.

Kaufmann's Trumpeter is in Deutches Museum. 

http://www.deutsches-museum.de/sammlungen/ausgewaehlte-objekte/meisterwerke-ii/trompeter

Using Google translation:

In the jargon of an empty museum curator, the mechanism of the machine described as follows: With the highly visible hand crank can be raised under the clothing of the trumpeter's two spiral springs, which drive the two Schöpfbälge and the spiral-tipped pen systems with two wooden drum stick. Four scanning lever and two toothed segments transmit the pulses of a pin system in two rotatably mounted brass drums that have plugged each 6 striking end tongues in the type of revolver drums. Each to blow off some tongue comes through rotation of the drum in front of one of the two valves are wind, whose motion is controlled by the second pin system (rhythm). The outlet openings of the drums lead into playing position in the mouthpiece of a natural trumpet that the ummoduliert Zungenton largely in a real trumpet. (Sequence of notes left drum: g C g h c f; right drum sound sequence: g E d e G a)

Trompeterautomat