Micro-Cricket Series Robots
Our cricket microrobot is being developed by an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students as part of the DARPA Distributed Robotics (DR) program. A "micro-robot" is no larger than 5 cm in any dimension. Our robot will locomote by both walking and jumping and its design is based upon crickets.
The below technologies were demonstrated at the September 1999 DARPA Distributed Robotics Principle Investigator's Meeting held at the Quantico U.S. Marine Corps Base.
A cricket cart was developed in order to test out some of the technologies that are going to be used on the final robot. Some pictures and a short movie can be found here.
Below is a picture of the 6-legged prototype:
Here are some movies of the 6-legged prototype's first steps:
CWRU Faculty, Department, Speciality-task:
Roger Quinn (PI), ME, bio-robotic design and control
Stephen Phillips, EECS, MEMS valves
Roy Ritzmann, Biology, neuromechanics of insects
Randy Beer, EECS, evolving neural network controllers using genetic algorithms
Steve Garverick, EECS, analog VLSI implementation of NN controller
Carnegie Mellon University:
Gary Fedder, EECE, MEMS joint angle sensors
The DARPA Distributed Robotics Program:
Dr. Elana Ethridge, Program Manager
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
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