RoboLobster – Is this gonna be mans next best friend?

touchingrese.jpgResearchers at DARPA and Nikolai Rulkov of Information Systems Laboratories in San Diego, Ayers, are working on a way to integrate a jelly fish like brain into advanced robotic defense vehicles to sniff out mines and other hazardous materials autonomously. The problem with current technology is that on several occasions the drone vehicles get stuck due to ignorable differences in its programming with relation to the environment it is put in. Using a new electronic nervous systems (ENS) controller, to create autonomous, biometric underwater robotic models that emulate the animals' nervous systems, they hope to create The RoboLamprey. They are now interested in comparing tactile sensing in the soft, bendable tentacles of jellyfish with that of the more rigid antennae of lobsters and integrating it all into the new ENS controllers to make the vehicle more like a dog who can fetch a stick without telling it what to do first.

One possible application of the RoboLobster or RoboLamprey is neutralizing mines in the surf zone (he said there are about 100 million active mines deployed worldwide, many of which end up in waterways due to erosion), there is also a compelling need to build a robotic platform that can be useful in complex environments such as streams and rivers. After all who would want to do boring mundane activities that kill a person's drive or do a job that involves the loss of life or limb?

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