Carnegie Mellon University

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Robotics powerhouse Carnegie Mellon University, led by William "Red" Whittaker (famous for leading the Red Team in the Grand Challenge), is one of the first to throw down the gauntlet in the race for the $25 million Google Lunar X-Prize. Whittaker (pictured above) will certainly be one of the top contenders having worked on a host of robots as director of the Field Robotics Center. Scarab is one of Whittaker's robots designed specifically for lunar exploration. The robot (video and right-most photo) is also designed with a drilling apparatus for lunar mining. Scarab can raise and lower its chassis; the raised-chassis pose allows it greater mobility in navigating around rocky terrain while and the lowered-chassis pose will allow it to drill into the lunar surface. Nomad is another robot designed to traverse uneven terrain. The winterized version of Nomad has been designed to navigate the Antarctic ice sheets. Watching Nova's behind-the-scenes coverage of the Grand Challenge, one gets the impression that Whittaker is quite the competitive professor and one who can pull together vast resources (funding and an army of students) to achieve his mission. With someone like Whittaker gunning for the Lunar 2.0 prize, the playing field doesn't look as level as it was when the announcement was made, does it?

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Engineers from Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute have created a tiny medical robot that can crawl across the surface of the heart to deliver therapy in a procedure that is much less invasive than current methods. HeartLander is inserted via two small incisions in the skin and the pericardium (sac that encloses the heart). Once inserted, the 0.8" (2cm) long robot attaches itself onto the heart surface and is then driven around using a joystick, its position tracked on a graphical interface using a tiny embedded tracking sensor called microBIRD. The robot can also navigate to a specified target automatically. The robot is made of two tethered segments with vacuum lines and wires running through the tether. The vacuum lines allow the robot to adhere to the heart surface using suction. The wires are driven using external linear ... continued