Robot: Will draw for food

Biological systems often figure out the best ways to get what they need to survive. Now a robot created by researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Imperial College London and the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign can make the same claim. The robot operates in front of a plate that has electrical terminals at one end and various obstacles between these terminals and the robot.

The robot can pick up and rearrange some of the items on the board, then draws paths to the terminals using conductive ink. The effect is that the robot gets to “eat” if it solves the connection puzzle.

Admittedly, this in itself is not particularly important. Obviously, the machine already has power, and getting more power doesn’t really help it. However, there are many tasks where a robotic art can have a task to perform that defies predetermination. This is an example of how software can assess the situation and then create and execute a plan to get the desired result.

Particularly impressive was the robot’s ability to move a ramp to bridge a barrier and then pull over the ramp. This isn’t going to revolutionize a pick and place setup, but we could see applications in, say, routing PCBs, which is not a dissimilar problem.

Need your own robot arm to play with? We’ve covered a few. Conductive ink not included.