Meet DARPA's New Militarized Earthworm 83
derekmead writes "Meshworm is a toughened, robotic earthworm that can crawl virtually silently at a speed of about 5 millimeters per second. DARPA wants to send it into battle. Believe it or not, the Pentagon's been working on building a robotic earthworm for a while. They tried putting one together with gears. They tried with air-powered and pneumatic pumps, but the results were bulky and untenable. Then, researchers at Harvard, MIT and Seoul National University in Korea put their heads together and designed an 'artificial muscle.' It's essentially a polymer mesh that's wrapped with nickel and titanium wire designed to stretch and contract with heat. When an electric current is applied, the mesh mimics the circular muscle system of an earthworm to scoot forward."
Question (Score:5, Funny)
Will they make good bait?
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Will they make good bait?
If you're looking to catch robotic fish, sure.
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Hollywood has given sharks with lasers a bad rap. They cook their food first. They're quite civilized, really.
Re:Question (Score:5, Funny)
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It is a new era in more disgusting looking robots.
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All those down mods, oh my! Apparently some moderators should catch up on their Americana [youtube.com]... (1:06)
Out fight against Queen slug-for-a-butt begins! (Score:4, Funny)
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Is that like an envening jacket?
More muscle! (Score:1)
ETA to guy on Internet letting it crawl in somewhere and putting up video in 3...2...1...
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I'm waiting for the Jackass team to pick this up, toy car up the bum style.
Worms! (Score:5, Funny)
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I think we should call them "Snake Things"... or perhaps "Graboids"!!!
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father... (Score:2, Offtopic)
the sleeper is still asleep
All hail the Shai Hulud! (Score:5, Funny)
The spice must flow!
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All they need to do is add hydrophobic coatings so they could go underwater and the synthetic materials used to replicate geckos, and these things could climb walls. Add a needle to inject lethal drugs and you have the ultimate assassin's weapon.
I for one don't welcome (Score:1, Funny)
our anal probe worm robots.
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Offtopic!?
Man, I certainly hope that holds true....
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This isn't offtopic at all. The worm's possible suggested use is in endoscopy.
Perfect Name: (Score:5, Funny)
Jim.
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Jim.
Jihad Intercept Module
No good without a Battery (Score:1)
You'll need a pretty energy dense power source to make this work. Batteries ruin all the fun.
59 feet per hour (Score:1)
5 millimeters per second = 59 feet per hour = 1 LOC bookshelf
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5 millimeters per second = 59 feet per hour
Seriously? You really couldn't stick to the rational system, which is metric?
This is the beginning of the apocalypse (Score:5, Funny)
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Not really.
Now when it can kill spiders, take out the trash, lift heavy objects, and listen to "those bitches at work be crazy" for hours at a time, then yes it might be.
If you want to end the human race faster, design an artificial vagina that is indistinguishable from the real thing, and can make a sandwich and fetch a beer.
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Okay, let me get this straight:
Your Proposal: Severely reduce the population of men on the planet, create something that will reduce the population of child bearing women, and this will lead to more orgasms in some sort of vague and poorly described way.
My Proposal: Nobody dies, we get highly advanced artificial pussies that can make sandwiches and fetch beer.
It's going to be a tough decision for people I think.
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Oh right, power consumption (Score:1)
Used nitinol a few years back for an undergraduate design project (articulated robotic tentacle); the stuff works, but the power draw (wire contraction is by resistive heating) was pretty significant. Our industry "client" from the Canadian Space Agency just about fell out of his chair when we told him what the total draw would be for a built-out prototype; it was many orders of magnitude higher than he expected.
Nitinol power consumption too high (Score:5, Interesting)
This "earthworm" device [harvard.edu] uses Nitinol shape-memory alloy [wikipedia.org] as an actuator. That's been tried many times before, going back to the 1980s.
As an actuator, Nitinol can produce significant power in small package, but it's a very inefficient device. The metal will change crystal structure when heated, and return to the original shape when cooled. Heating is usually accomplished by running electricity through the Nitinol wire. Most of the energy goes into waste heat; only a small fraction comes out of the actuator as useful work.
So a battery-powered earthworm isn't likely. As a cabled device, it has potential. A great application would be short run cable-laying for fibre optics. A machine that could get a fibre optic cable underground from street to house without digging up sidewalks and lawns would be very useful.
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Just add a micro-sized nuclear battery. FTFY.
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They call them "pigs" in the , which require the use of pig launchers and receivers. You also get flexi-pigs and cleaning pigs. [globalpipe...eering.com]
For cable installation, they use "cable blowing machines" which use high pressure air to push cables through ducts.
I for one... (Score:1)
...welcome our robotic earthworm overloads.
We're seriously the last generation that will enjoy being at the top of the food chain on our own planet before the robots take over.
BattleTech Myomer Muscle (Score:5, Informative)
This new "artificial muscle" sounds a lot like the Myomer muscles from the BattleTech franchise except that I believed they worked on magnetics instead of heat and they weren't supposed to be invented until 2350.
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This is what I thought of as well.
And there they worked by contracting when an electrical current was applied.. this seems rather similar.
Personally, I'm hoping that they can develop this further for things like artificial limbs/muscles. If we can one day replace degenerated muscle tissue, it could provide an answer for things like MD or ALS. (Although in the case of ALS, it would need to replace motor control with an external source of some sort..)
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It sounds like this won't really work that well, because of the heat issue. I guess it depends on exactly how much this stuff heats up compared to human muscle, but human tissue isn't going to do too well with heating elements integrated into it. Linear electric motors are very energy-efficient, and it'd probably make more sense to adapt those to this use.
As for the BattleTech muscles, if they use magnetic fields or whatever instead of heat, then that alone is a giant difference, as again, the heating iss
I for one (Score:5, Funny)
I for one welcome our new earthworm, uh erm, underlords.
"DARPA wants to send it into battle" (Score:5, Informative)
The unanswered question, though, is - to do what, exactly?
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Yes, nothing like demoralizing the enemy with AC/DC and pork.
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To dig through more tax payers money without any benefits.
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There was a movie about this (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamers_(1995_film) [wikipedia.org]
Soil burrowing robotic weapons... and it didn't end well for the humans
Next Iphone prototype (Score:2)
TFA: "Says Kellar Autumn of Lewis and Clark University, 'I predict that in the next decade we will see shape-changing artificial muscles in many products, such as mobile phones, portable computers and automobiles.'"
When the next iphone prototype gets left in a bar it simply slithers back to HQ, using its camera to identify anyone that sees it for later questioning by the authorities.
I assume they needed it (Score:2)
militarized earthworm... must be to churn through all the militarized crap and make something green.
Wait for it..... (Score:2)
Wormsign!
Someone at DARPA... (Score:1)
...has been reading James Blish's 'The Day after Judgement' and has decided to create the Hess Land torpedo ....
Dr. Evil's request (Score:1)