Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) promotes “the science and practice of humanitarian response worldwide.”

One such project teams an explosive-sniffing mongoose with a therefore cheaper and dumber robot to map landmines in countries so unfortunately afflicted.

Thrishantha Nanayakkara in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, details the training of dwarf mongooses (mongeese? - you knew I’d  rhetorically pose it) to identify C4 explosive. With olfactory sensitivity over 1000 times we humans, the slinky rodents were quite capable - but had to be made willing. Cheese, it eventuated, was a favorite food reward that didn’t overwhelm their noses when learning to sniff the explosives during increasingly difficult testing.

The point of a mongoose is its advantage over dogs, most commonly used. As one learns from Henry Lawson’s The Loaded Dog the slobbering ‘best friend’ is likely to return from the jungle - having executed your edict - with the ticking device clasped (not particularly gently) between their great idiotic jaws.

Mongooses are too light to trigger devices and save the robot needing detection smarts - a considerable research and engineering payload - and can out-sniff a dog.

Thrishantha and colleagues Tharindu Dissanayake, Prasanna Mahipala and K. A. Gayan Sanjaya recently presented this paper on “Human-Animal-Robot Cooperative System for Anti-Personal Mine Detection” based on research at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, a name synonymous with our sorely-missed dear old friend Arthur C. Clarke, its Chancellor from 1979 to 2002.

The team uploaded a video to YouTube showing a tandem pair of “iguana” robots creeping along carrying a metal detector and stuff, being guided by both a mongoose sniffer and the human. 

Mongoose-Robot team for sniffing and marking land mines

A close-up in the video below shows in detail the “semi-autonomous legged robot” traipsing through the undergrowth Iguana-like perhaps, but reminding me more of a Millipede (Diplpoda) in its blind relentless stumble.

Iguana-like legged robot

More information:

* Original presentation paper outlining research

* Thrishantha Nanayakkara’s “Humanitarian Robotics” page

* Thrishantha’s landing page at Harvard - with link to Harvard Humanitarian Initiative

It makes me wonder what humans are thinking [not much, is my chief observation].

Anti-personnel land mines rank amongst the most evil criminal inventions. Their aim is diabolical. As if the military tactical use is not morally-borderline - like the outlawed use of chemical warfare - munitions manufacturers continue to devastate large tracts of poorer countries for decades with unexploded mines. The war ends, the civilians and their descendents pay an endless price.

If you research, manufacture, or sell these things, we’re thinking of you. Not nicely.

Child’s Dream Comes True

Robot musculature is the obvious alternative to mechanical actuators.

No amount of clockwork-sophistication will protect one’s personal mechabot from the smear and stigma attached to being ‘kinetically challenged." Such kenisic taunts will send early model personal assistants (PAbots) into premature and possibly permanent CPU denial (blue screen).

Aside from biological muscles or motors, pistons and levers, Electroactive Polymers (’EAP’s in the trade) are a hot line of research which is pursuing two directions based on the activation: electronic (driven by electric field) and ionic (mobility of ions).

Electronic polymers like electrostrictive, electrostatic, piezoelectric, and ferroelectric demand high field potentials close to their dielectric breakdown, while ionic EAPs like gels, polymer-metal composites, conductive polymers, and carbon nanotubes - though low-voltage media - must maintain wetness.

Not a problem, the latter, for we wetbots but a downer for the lab scientist. Enter promising breakthrough, for lightweight bots, at least.

Inha University in South Korea has demonstrated cellulose - lightweight, inexpensive, low power requirements - made electrically active by dissolving paper pulp, forming it into sheets, and coating it with a layer of gold as an electrode, ‘actuates’ with considerable promise for lightweight robotic forms, either crawling or wing-flapping critters.

Some areas of the cellulose film are highly ordered, while in other areas, the cellulose strands are tangled like spaghetti. The movement of ions through the paper — and the movement of cellulose strands themselves, which have negative and positively charged ends — causes the paper to bend in response to an electrical current. The bending is driven by the ordered regions, but free space in disordered regions allows ions to flow more freely and adds to the paper’s ability to deform.

Professor Jaehwan Kim, with Zoubeida Ounaies at Texas AMU, are working to strengthen "smart" cellulose with carbon nanotubes employing their high electrical conductivity and strength. The aim is films of cellulose strands intimately tangled with carbon nanotubes will exert more force than pure cellulose films.

Says Jaehwan Kim, associate professor at the university, EAPs "offer capabilities that are currently considered science fiction. EAP are able to offer a range of performance and characteristics that may not be reproduced or replicated by other technologies."

The attention-grabbing headline "microwave-powered flapping wing" ultra-lightweight, low power, flexible, damage tolerant, noiseless, and agile ‘robots’ has swamped the equally startling and inspired potential others:
- tactile interface and active tactile display device for reading by the blind;
- inflatable space structures, inflatable antenna experiment, ultra-light weight solar arrays and large telescopes;
- biologically inspired and insect-like robots, in agriculture and ecology, toys and animatronics for entertainment industry;
- biological muscle augmentation, miniature in-vivo robots for diagnostics and microsurgery, active bandage and anti-G suits;
- noise control of aircraft cabins, automobiles, ships, buildings, and smart wall papers;
- MEMS, micropumps, valves.

Nothing new under the sun, I always say. Vis this ancient (yet to be dated - guessing circa 1910-20) hygroscopic cellophane magic fish:

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[The inscription on the Cadbury's fish reads: "Place the fish on the palm of your hand & it comes to life" ]