Robots in Gogo | The press

Robots on the beaches and skyscrapers, or who play badminton or that strut in the mud. The advances in cybernetics are breathtaking. Here are some glimpse of the future.

Clean the beaches

Bebot has just taken his first steps in Canada. This French electrical robot remote -controlled beach cleaning, launched in 2021, shas the sand and storage the small foreign bodies that he finds in a tank of 100 liters. It was deployed by an Ontario NGO, Probe pollution, on beaches of the Great Lakes. Bebot, used by several US NGOs, costs US $ 80,000 and was designed by the Italian robotics firm Niteko for the Searial Cleaners Marine Cleaners subsidiary, a French aluminum marinas design firm. Searial Cleaners also has port cleaning robots. Moving with his caterpillars, he drags the tank and can clean 3000 m^⁠2 beach in 3 hours with recharging. Then it takes 8 hours to recharge it.

Cybernetic badminton

Swiss engineers have developed a robot that can play autonomously in badminton against humans. In the journal Science Robotics From last May, they explain that the ability to follow the steering wheel and predict your trajectory, then move to hit it with a racket, is applicable to a host of industrial situations. The Anymal-D robot, which has four legs, was able to return 10 strokes to different angles and speeds. He sometimes stood on his back legs to hit with his arm. Anymal was created in 2016 by the Zurich Federal Polytechnic School and has already learned to dance, open doors and inspect machines in factories and mines.

Graat windows

The days of height window cleaners are counted. This is at least the promise of two companies, Verobotics of Israel and Skyline Robotics from Great Britain. Since last year, the robots of these two young companies, respectively appointed IBEX and OZMO, have obtained contracts on American skyscrapers. The robots move on the vertical walls with sucking appendages. Verobotics called its IBEX robot in honor of an alpine oubly. The two robots use artificial intelligence (AI) to plan the cleaning of skyscrapers. They use dry cleaning agents which, for the moment, cannot tackle the very dirty windows, for example on the skyscrapers whose windows are only cleaned once a year.

Sabots for mud

Estonian engineers have developed a sabot robot that moves more easily in mud and melting snow. These floors hamper the movements – as anyone has seen, whose foot has freed itself from a boot stuck in a water -fired field in spring, or in soft snow. The two fingers of a hoof thwart the suction generated by mud or melting snow, explain researchers from the University of Tallinn. This will facilitate the use of robots in estuaries and swamps. Their innovation was published in January in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics.

A Kawasaki horse

At the Osaka Universal Exhibition last spring, Kawasaki motorcycle manufacturer presented a robotic horse prototype. Corleo could be mounted by one or two horsemen and is intended to replace mountain biking on particularly damaged land. Its hydrogen engine produces 150 CC. Kawasaki plans that current technology is not yet ready for a safe operation and considers that it was not until the 2040s that such a horse was marketed. The review The Economist reports that a Chinese electric car manufacturer, Xpeng, announced in Osaka to work on a robotic pony that could be mounted by children.

Skip like a bird

The ability to fly is not the only attribute of birds. They are also able to move by hopping over damaged terrains. This ability could be very useful for air drones, believe engineers from the Federal Polytechnic School in Lausanne, Switzerland. They developed a “robotic vehicle inspired by birds for multiple environments”, or Raven, according to the English acronym, which imitates the hips, ankles and the feet of the birds. Raven, who is able to walk and jump over trenches and obstacles, was presented in December in the journal Nature.

See the Raven in action