Don't like your red Skittles touching your yellow ones? FANUC has a robot you should meet.

Before you let a robot handle your prescription drugs, better let it train on candy first. FANUC’s M-1iA picking and sorting robot is one of the fastest robots on the planet. While it’s not the absolute champion of speed, it can do something that many of its competitors cannot: see in color. With FANUC’s “iRVision” visual analysis capabilities, the M-1iA can locate, pick up, and move identical objects based on the colors of their surfaces. FANUC has the high-speed sorter demonstrating its skills using sugary candies, but the ultimate idea is to have it process prescription pills or other small valuable items. Watch its super quick selection skills in the videos below. I can’t speak to its rapport with patients, but this robot is about a billion times faster than any pharmacist I’ve ever seen.

FANUC isn’t crazy to think that the M-1iA could find a home in the pharmaceutical industry. Robots are already sorting pills and filling prescriptions in hospitals in the real world. RFID tags and other means of tracking containers keep these robots from needing to sort mixed pills, but the FANUC robot’s ability to discern color could provide a valuable means of double checking that the right medicine goes into the right pill box. Maybe it could even detect if a drug had been damaged or spoiled. Whether or not the M-1iA will makes its way into pharmacies or industrial pharmaceutical factories in the near future isn’t clear, but I think we’ll see more sorting robots that showcase their visual skills as well as their speed. For now, the M-1iA represents a godsend to all those candy lovers who like to eat their Skittles, M&Ms, and jelly beans one color at a time. OCD, meet Robotics – you two were made for each other.

[screen capture and video credit: kmoriyama]
[sources: FANUC site and video]

Like a cockroach, DASH is fast and robust.

Have you ever tried to catch a running cockroach? They’re fast little suckers, and resilient too, which is why scientists at the University of California Berkeley modeled their latest robot after them. DASH or Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod is a six legged robot made from cardboard and polymer. It’s the size of your open hand, weighs just 16 grams, can run up to 1.5 m/s, and survives falls of 28 meters without damage! This cockroach bot is really something to behold. Check out the IEEE Spectrum video after the break and watch how DASH survives the fall from the top of a building and keeps running.

As robotic systems become increasingly complex, they are able to mimic real world creatures. There are toys like the hexbugs, and more advanced robots like StickyBot that exhibit animal skills and/or behavior. The reverse is also true, we’ve seen robotics used to help explain developments in evolution. This interplay between the sciences is important stuff. When the advances in one field are applied in another the rate of new discoveries increases. Feedback loops between biology and robots may be one of the means by which we develop the next generation of genetically engineered machines and life-like automatons.

Watching DASH in action, I’m stunned by how simple yet powerful the robot is. The oar-like motion of its legs is rudimentary, but it allows the bot to travel at 15 body lengths per second. Humans would have to run at 65 mph (~100km/h) to match this feat and we have much more complicated gaits. I’m equally impressed by the upwards scramble at 1:56. Can you imagine running at a 6 foot wall and just popping over it?

UC Berkeley’s Biomimetics Lab, where DASH was created, is also interested in the way that robots are built. To that end, DASH has one of the coolest constructions I’ve seen in a robot that performs this well. First, the materials used for the chassis are simple: cardboard and polymer. Just one DC motor for forward motion and a smaller servomotor for turns keeps the bot weight down (16.2 grams is next to nothing!). Second, the build time (less than one hour) is ridiculous for a hand made robot. Considering DASH’s simple construction, I wonder if they’d be willing to design a version that could be made on a 3D printer like MakerBot. Finally, the design is absurdly robust. I’ve seen some robots that you can toss around, and robots that can jump a wall, but none that can free fall for 25+ meters onto concrete and then walk away.

As cool as DASH is, I’m not sure that we’ll see much more of it. Upgrading to using a carbon fiber body would make it more resilient, but I don’t know that we need a resilient cockroach bot. Instead, I think that DASH is going to be an inspiration piece. It’s a robot whose design, construction, and performance will help engineers create the next generation of industrial and research machines. We could see smaller versions become part of a robotic swarm, or larger versions act as hazardous environment probes.

As engineers continue to adapt animals into robots, there are all sorts of amazing possibilities. DASH runs as fast as a roach, I wonder if there will be a bot that jumps as high as a flea, or that has the proportionate strength of an ant. Certainly we could use a beetle robot to deal with all the… dung… going on in our world.

[photo credit: UC Berkeley Biomimetics Lab]

[video credit: UC Berkeley and IEEE Spectrum]