Coffee and Robotics

     This past December Dave Gilbert of CNN posted an article titled "How rodents and coffee could shape future space robots," and it immediately caught my eye. Who knew that coffee and space robots could be used in the same sentence (or robots for that matter)? As a result of research by Cornell, the University of Chicago, iRobot Corp and Liquidia, robotic grippers can now be made with just a latex balloon and coffee granules.

     At The Neutral Ground Coffeehouse, coffee beans are ground up into loose power and then packed into a “puck” so that pressurized water can be pushed through to make a concentrated espresso shot. Similarly, vacuum sealed coffee is like a brick until it is opened and the grains come loose. Researchers undoubtedly have realized the benefits of a material that can be loose and conform to the shape of an object it grasps, but can also become tightly packed when it pinches and holds onto something. As 2010 "jamming gripper" researcher Heinrich Jaeger notes, the coffee-based gripper doesn't require a lot of surface area to hold onto something, either.

     This new technology is proving to have more uses than originally thought, according to co-founder of the UK's Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) and robotics expert Alan Winfield. It is possible that these coffee-grip robots can be used to collect samples on rover missions in outer space. Oftentimes robots need to collect and analyze rock samples found on planets, and the soft gripper works to grasp these samples while conforming to the object and not damaging them.

     As for the "rodent" side to this story, teams at the UK's Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) are working to develop the "Shrewbot," in honor of the Etruscan shrew, to determine if a robot can use sense to discover its surroundings without vision as animals like mice and shrews do. The robot is equipped with artifical whiskers like those of its furry comrades. Team leader Martin Pearson mentions that this work is mainly to further biologists' understanding of animals' sensory functions. However, he also notes that this kind of robotic application could be used to explore smoke-filled rooms, inspect pipelines in deep ocean waters, and possibly even wander planets where there is limited vision because of lack of light or a thick atmosphere. Alan Winfield notes that these whiskers take in information at the root -- in theory they could be damaged at the tips if they brush against rock or other materials, but still function properly.

     This is a great development for robotics. We now have grippers made using just a balloon and coffee grinds that could allow us to collect information on samples in space that may have otherwise been crushed by a less gentle gripping mechanism. And the "Shrewbot" uses whiskers that could have interesting applications in murky places where vision might not be that useful. Although these applications are still in development, I find the multitude of possibilities for them very promising. There is a chance that one day, planets with otherwise heavy atmospheres could be explored, information could be mined by whiskers instead of cameras, and fragile samples can be collected by a gripper made out of coffee beans. Yet, Winfield reminds us that these type of robots are still in development and shouldn't be expected to be running through space any time soon.