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Nothing Stands in the Way of an Exoskeleton-Clad Cockroach Bot

Watch cockroach bots scuttle through obstacles with ease.

Cockroaches are pretty badass. They can withstand high doses of radiation, survive long periods without food, and have streamlined bodies that let them cruise through cluttered terrain. So what happens if you apply their superbug abilities to robotics?

Researchers at the the University in California, Berkeley took inspiration from the cockroach's streamlined body to create a robot that can move deftly through cluttered environments just like a roach. In a video, first a real roach, then a cuboid robotic replica, followed by a spherical exoskeleton-clad roach-bot, all navigate through a similar obstacle-littered terrain to different effect.

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In a study published today in the journal of Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, the researchers explained that they collected roughly 1,000 trials from several cockroaches by observing how they moved through grass-like beams—using a form of "natural parkour"—in the laboratory. They also changed their body shapes by attaching them with a range of artificial shells, finding that the less round the cockroach became, the less effectively it was able to manoeuvre through the grass beams.

A discoid cockroach (Blaverus discoidalis) stands poised in front of a row of grass-like beam obstacles. Photo Credit: Chen Li. Courtesy of PolyPEDAL LAB, Biomimetic Millisystems Lab, and CiBER, UC Berkeley.

Inspired by the roach's thin, rounded body shape, the researchers transferred their new-found knowledge onto the robotics world. The team's roach-bot initially started out with a cuboid body shape, but this led it to get stuck when it tried to navigate through the grass beams. Subsequently, the researchers added a thin, rounded exoskeletal shell to the robot.

"This enabled the robot to roll (rather than turn left/right) and fit its thin body through gaps to traverse densely cluttered obstacles by rolling its body like animals do to fit through gaps," explained Chen Li, a postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley's Department of Integrative Biology, in an email. "By adding a terradynamically streamlined exoskeletal shell inspired from the cockroach, we increased the robot's probability to traverse densely cluttered obstacles from under 20 percent to 90 percent."

Li explained that "terradynamic streamlining" was "a terrestrial analogy of the streamlined body shape found in many birds and fishes." And for this study, the researchers found out that the roach's thin and rounded shape can facilitate its passage through densely cluttered environments. "This is just the first step in understanding the role body shape [plays] in terrestrial locomotion in complex terrain and the underlying physics," said Li. He explained that other body shapes may be effective in for other applications such as climbing up and over obstacles, for example.

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In a nutshell, the researchers are showing that a robot's physical design and ability to interact with the environment provide an alternative to the sensor-based mapping and path planning methods used by larger robots to avoid obstacles.

"We discovered that the cockroach's rounded body shape helps them traverse densely cluttered [terrain], by allowing their body to roll to fit through obstacle gaps," explained Li.

Large robots such as Big Dog and Wildcat, built by Google-owned robotics company Boston Dynamics, use laser scanners and powerful computers to map out their terrain from which they plan out a safe path free of obstacles, explained Li.

But the researchers at Berkeley discovered, unsurprisingly, that small animals and robots can negotiate obstacles differently by using terradynamic streamlining.

Inspired by the design and movement of real cockroaches navigating through obstacles, the researchers applied "terradynamic streamlining" to their robotic counterparts. (Top) A discoid roach rolls its body from side to side to get past obstacles. (Bottom) A spherical exoskeleton shell allows the VelociRoACH to cross obstacles using a rolling motions. Photo Credit: Chen Li. Courtesy of PolyPEDAL LAB, Biomimetic Millisystems Lab, and CiBER, UC Berkeley

In the future, the researchers aim to apply their findings to small inexpensive robots with a variety of applications.

"The ability of robots to go through densely cluttered terrain such as crop fields, forests, building rubble etc. is critical to applications such as precision agriculture, environment monitoring, military reconnaissance, and search and rescue," said Li.

As the sensors and computers needed for mapping out a safe path would be too cumbersome for smaller robots to carry, the researchers modelled their roach-bot on discoid cockroaches (Blaberus discoidalis), which are native to tropical rainforests. These critters are known for being able to navigate skillfully through leaf litter, shrubs and tree slabs, to name just a few roadblocks.