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posted by chromas on Friday August 03 2018, @07:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the popcorn-robot,-working-robot,-happy-robot,-moving-robot dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

"Popcorn-Driven Robotic Actuators," a recent paper co-authored by Steven Ceron, mechanical engineering doctoral student, and Kirstin H. Petersen, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, examines how popcorn's unique qualities can power inexpensive robotic devices that grip, expand or change rigidity.

"The goal of our lab is to try to make very minimalistic robots which, when deployed in high numbers, can still accomplish great things," said Petersen, who runs Cornell's Collective Embodied Intelligence Lab. "Simple robots are cheap and less prone to failures and wear, so we can have many operating autonomously over a long time. So we are always looking for new and innovative ideas that will permit us to have more functionalities for less, and popcorn is one of those."

[...] Since kernels can't shrink once they've popped, a popcorn-powered mechanism can generally be used only once, though multiple uses are conceivable because popped kernels can dissolve in water, Ceron said.

The paper was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Petersen said she hopes it inspires researchers to explore the possibilities of other nontraditional materials.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Friday August 03 2018, @11:21PM

    by Bot (3902) on Friday August 03 2018, @11:21PM (#717027) Journal

    HEY return that corn back to where you found it, it is Hardy the sexbot's fuel for sustained erections.

    Meddling meatbags.

    Poor Hardy, has a sh!t job (sometimes literally).

    Also, he is the first system where installing systemd made sense.
    Because nothing can make a kernel pop sooner than systemd.

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