[mysterious music]
Sean Gart: People hate cockroaches because they're a little bit icky
they touch you with their antenna, it's kind
of gross
but because they are so quick
because they can climb so well that information can
help you build a robot
that is fast and can climb well.
(Robot noise)
Chen Li: That's exactly what we are looking for
how they can go everywhere and move
through almost any environment.
(Researcher tapping roach)
Gart: So to start with the study we took the
cockroaches and we put them in a little test
arena and they ran across the obstacle very quickly.
Li: We studied them traversing both a large
gap and large bump obstacle, and then we used
high speed videos to observe how they interact
with the obstacles to eventually traverse.
What we found is that if they can run fast
enough and if they have appropriate enough
body pose, they would be able to pitch up
and very quickly transition into dynamic climbing.
Gart: So once we did the animal study, we
moved to our robot study.
Li: This REX Robot which we are using is basically
modeled after cockroach so that it is dynamically stable.
(Robot sounds)
Gart: We ran it toward the same obstacles
that the cockroaches crossed, and what we
found was
this pitching the body upward was pretty important.
So we added what we call an active tail to
the robot.
So the tail swings back, the robot also pitches
up.
(Robot Sound)
Li: Once we implement this new control strategy,
the robot can actually traverse an obstacle
that is about fifty percent greater than its
body size.
Gart: So the more we know about traversing
these obstacles, the better robots will become
in the future, so we have the cockroach to
thank for these advancements in robotics.
(Music ending)
