Kaushik Jayaram/Harvard SEAS”The terrific part about this workout is that we did not have to alter anything about the previous style,” said Kaushik Jayaram, very first author of the paper on HAMR-JR.”We showed that this procedure can be applied to essentially any gadget at a range of sizes.”
The researchers also wished to see how shrinking a bot would affect its running speed and other capabilities. They shrank the four-legged HAMR-JR to simply 2.25 centimeters in body length– it weighs in at about 0.3 grams. The team mimicked the movement of similarly-scaled insects, so HAMR-JR is able to trot, jump, bound and pronk. It can turn right and left, and it can trot backwards.
“Most robots at this scale are quite basic and just show standard movement,” Jayaram said. “We have actually shown that you don’t have to compromise dexterity or control for size.”
Jayaram and co-authors Samantha Castellanos, E. Farrell Helbling and Jennifer Shum provided their findings at the International Conference on Robotics Automation today, where groups from MIT also presented work on enhancing soft robotics’ spatial awareness and ability to understand fragile things.