This version isn't steerable is it? I can't tell from the video(1), but it seems you build it for a specific path, and then inflate it to get there?
Seems like a cool start.. but I don't understand why they advertise it as "It can have a power supply that doesn't need to move. It can stay stationary." Is that feature? headscratch.jpg
The stationary power supply is a feature because batteries are heavy and flammable and usually not flexible. If you want to send a camera or something through a small hole, or underwater, or into some hazardous environment, it's nice to not have to send the power supply with it.
I think it's supposed to be like one of those tentacle monsters, it has some base that stays fixed. The DoE is funding research on this because they think one of these can send an appendage into a hole and see if somebody is hiding plutonium on the other side.
How has this gotten so little activity on this forum? Has LLM stolen the oxygen from really cool stuff? This is the kind of hacker stuff that makes me smile. Seems like a really clever idea that can actually be useful.
My impression (backed up with data from my RSS reader) is that articles about robots don't usually get a lot of votes on HN, and I do think that's sad because there is rapid progress in that area. If you are worried about LLMs taking white collar jobs you could also be worrying about robots taking blue collar and service jobs.
I've posted a lot of articles about vine robots and this is the first one that got any traction but this one has the advantage of making them look really simple although these ones are a little too simple in that they don't have the mechanisms that make it possible for them to turn.
I've seen papers in arXiv for vine robots that look really phallic, I mean they don't just look like a penis but they work like a penis. There is a lot of work on these at national labs and I've wondered what would happen if one of these papers were submitted to The Journal of Irreproducible Results (whose title isn't such a joke anymore since that's Science and Nature) or to one of those conservative commissions that wants to stamp out "government waste".
There are so many Japanese anime about 触手 (Shokushu) which is also used to describe the whole mass of tentacles that a creature like an octopus has as opposed to an individual appendage.
The video said that you'd be able to pull cables along, but I'm struggling to see how you'd do that given that the actual walls of the "robot" are static once deployed. Is the idea that you somehow turn the cables inside out too?
I can see it as a bootstrap method. You attach a string to the inside end of the vine that moves forward, and it spools out as the vine "grows":
____________________
\
O=string============+ movement of growth ->
____________________/
O = spool of thread
When you see the vine on the other end, you can open the end to get the string, attach the cable to the former spool end, and start pulling the string to pull the cable. You want a light enough string for the vine to pull through, while being strong enough to pull a cable through.
To affix your spool, or to access the string at all you need to go through the airtight robot and you need to know the exact distance that you need to run the wire since you can't access it unless the robot is fully extended. Kinda only makes sense if you have exact measurements and are willing to destroy the robot after it fully extends. Still probably a great way to run wire through long pipes.
Nope, just attach the cable to the last bit of the robot to be grown. It’ll be pulled along with it until the cable runs through the length of the whole robot.
This would be a lot of fun to use in an art installation setting. I'm considering building a few just for how strange and wonderful it would look to see a bunch of growing robots that a group of people can control.
I remember seeing a demo of this kind of robot (theoretical at time I think) when I was at university. One of my lecturers was trying to develop them for use in things like brain surgery. That was 25 years ago and I do occasionally wonder what happened in that field. Will have to dig into this a bit more…
Basically it looks like the center of the vine is hollow and inverted, and the programming decides which side to feed more or less to to make it turn, and then air is added to create stability.
If you can imagine bunching up a longer sock to put it on, it's a little like that.
If you had a "head" riding the front of the vine, it could include cameras/sensors, and the rear of the head could steer just-in-time, by applying heat/adhesive/scoring/other?
Seems like a cool start.. but I don't understand why they advertise it as "It can have a power supply that doesn't need to move. It can stay stationary." Is that feature? headscratch.jpg
(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRjFFgAZQnk