ROBOT TROUSER SNAKE stiffens to MOUNT slippery mounds

Boffins rejoice at performance of slithery tool

By Lewis Page, 10 Oct 2014

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Scientists say their new snake robot has cracked the tricky problem of slithering up slippery mounds.

This undeniable pushing-back of the frontiers of science comes to us courtesy of Professor Daniel Goldman's Complex Rheology And Biomechanics Lab ("the Crab Lab") at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US.

Goldman and his Crabby colleagues were determined to find out just how it is that the enigmatic "sidewinder" rattlesnakes of America manage to squirm their way up slippery sand dunes, a notoriously tricky form of terrain to get about on - and which leaves other snakes baffled.

After a good deal of investigation, which involved painting reflective spots on some surprisingly cooperative rattlesnakes and videoing them in action, the good prof and his Crabs managed to crack the sidewinders' methods. They proved this by applying them to snakey robots furnished by colleagues at the famous mad-robot labs of Carnegie Mellon university, pictured above. The basic robot, as shown, is clad in a textile wrapping or trouser in order to keep sand out of its works - in much the same fashion as Israeli military robots employing a similar form factor.

Goldman and his colleagues write:

Our laboratory experiments reveal that as granular incline angle increases, sidewinder rattlesnakes increase the length of their body in contact with the sand. Implementing this strategy in a physical robot model of the snake enables the device to ascend sandy slopes close to the angle of maximum slope stability ... sidewinding with contact-length control mitigates failure on granular media.

Videos of the experiments can be viewed here. The scholarly paper itself is in hefty boffinry mag Science, here.

"They've looked at the whole problem, end to end," a robotic engineer told the BBC, reporting on the research. ®

Amazing Undersea Mountains Discovered by Use of Satellites Data (Video)

Scientists are pretty brilliant, and they continued to show the extent of that brilliance regarding the amazing undersea world. In the October 3 issue of the journal Science, scientists reveal they have discovered not just a few, but thousands of undersea mountains. In the report called New global marine gravity model from CryoSat-2 and Jason-1 reveals buried tectonic structure, researchers discussed the findings of what they call, seamounts, that rise from the seafloor. In addition to uncovering the water embraced mountains, researchers discussed how the motions of the oceanic plates can form the ridges and trenches that mark the ocean floor.

The study encompassed information gleaned from existing data and notably, radar altimeter measurements from two satellites. Jason-1 is monitored and managed between NASA and France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) agency.

The gravity model of the North Atlantic. The red dots you see pinpoints the areas earthquakes struck, notably those with a 5.5 magnitude or more. It also highlights the current location of the seafloor spreading ridges. Amazing stuff! Credit: David Sandwell, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego

Jason-1 is used to monitor the ocean circulation around the world, it was also used to map the gravity field. The second satellite, CryoSat-2 records data regarding polar ice, and was launched in 2010 by the European Space Agency, it is also used to operate over the oceans. In gathering the information, researchers were able to draw a detailed and vivid map, illustrating the amazing seamounts. The information will be used for future “exploratory work” said Don Rice, the current director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Ocean Sciences. The agency was behind the funding of the project and research.

The extensive research and study over a course of 12 years also revealed continental connections from South America and Africa. Additionally, expanding seafloor ridges buried beneath sediment at the Gulf of Mexico, which were active nearly 150 million years ago, showed evidence of its appearance on the maps.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography states the study brings forth the improvement to the “estimates of seafloor depth in the 80 percent of the oceans that remains uncharted or is buried beneath thick sediment.”

The discovery drives forward extended areas of needed research, and will also be used by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and a foundation for Google’s new ocean maps.