Even nature's most disgusting creatures have important secrets, but who would want a swarm of cockroaches coming towards them?
即使是自然界最恶心的生物 也身怀一些绝技, 不过谁会想见到一大群蟑螂 朝自己冲来呢?
Yet one of the greatest differences between natural and human technologies relates to robustness. Robust systems are stable in complex and new environments. Remarkably, cockroaches can self-stabilize running over rough terrain. When we put a jet pack on them, or give them a perturbation like an earthquake, we discovered that their wonderfully tuned legs allow them to self-stabilize without using any of their brainpower. They can go over complex terrain like grass, no problem, and not get destabilized. We discovered a new behavior where, because of their shape, they actually roll automatically to their side to go through this artificial test bit of grass.
然而,在自然和人类技术间最大的不同之处中, 有一项与健壮性有关。 健壮系统能保持稳定, 即使是在复杂和新的环境里。 引人注意的是,蟑螂可以保持自身稳定地 跑过崎岖的路面。 我们又给它们装上了喷气背包, 或是增加了像地震那样的扰动, 结果发现,它们的腿调整能力极强, 使得它们可以自我保持稳定 而无需大脑的辅助。 它们可以穿过像草地这样的复杂地形, 没有问题,不会失稳。 我们发现了一种新的行为, 跟它们的体形密切相关, 他们实际上是自动翻向一边 来穿过这片人造实验草丛。
Robust systems can perform multiple tasks with the same structure. Here's a new behavior we've discovered. The animals rapidly invert and disappear in less than 150 milliseconds — you never see them — using the same structures that they use to run, their legs. They can run upside down very rapidly on rods, branches and wires, and if you perturb one of those branches, they can do this. They can perform gymnastic maneuvers like no robot we have yet. And they have nearly unlimited maneuverability with that same structure and unprecedented access to a variety of different areas. They have wings for flying when they get warm, but they use those same wings to flip over if they get destabilized. Very effective.
健壮系统可以承担多重任务, 系统结构却无需变动。 这是我们发现的一种新的行为。 这些小家伙快速地翻了个个儿然后躲起来, 不到150毫秒——你根本看不到—— 所用的结构仍然是它们用来跑的腿。 它们可以翻过身来跑, 非常快,在竿子、树枝和电线上都行, 如果你在树枝上施加扰动, 它们就会这样, 它们可以做出体操动作, 我们还没有机器人可以做到。 它们的动作能力几乎是无限的, 使用的是同一结构, 适应各种不同环境的能力 也是前所未见的。 它们有翅膀,觉得热的时候可用来飞行, 而同样是翅膀,在它们失稳时, 可以帮它们翻过来。 非常有效。
Robust systems are also fault tolerant and fail-safe. This is the foot of a cockroach. It has spines, gluey pads and claws, but if you take off those feet, they can still go over rough terrain, like the bottom video that you see, without hardly slowing down. Extraordinary. They can run up mesh without their feet. Here's an animal using a normal, alternating tripod: three legs, three legs, three legs, but in nature, the insects often have lost their legs. Here's one moving with two middle legs gone. It can even lose three legs, in a tripod, and adopt a new gait, a hopping gait. And I point out that all of these videos are slowed down 20 times, so they're actually really fast, when you see this.
健壮系统也是能容错并且防止故障的。 这是一只蟑螂脚, 上面有刺、胶垫和爪子, 但如果你把这些脚去掉, 它们仍然可以穿过起伏不平的地表, 在下面的这个视频中你们可以看到, 速度没有明显下降。真是非凡的能力。 没有脚它们也可以爬上网子。 这儿有一只,用的是通常的三足切换方式: 三条腿,三条腿,三条腿, 但在自然界,这些昆虫常常会失去腿。 这一只是少了两条中腿在爬。 它甚至可以少三条腿,像三脚架那样, 用了一种新的,跳跃步态。 我需要强调,所有这些视频 都已经放慢了20倍的速度。 所以它们实际非常快,虽然你看到的是这样。
Robust systems are also damage resistant. Here's an animal climbing up a wall. It looks like a rapid, smooth, vertical climb, but when you slow it down, you see something very different. Here's what they do. They intentionally have a head-on collision with the wall so they don't slow down and can transition up it in 75 milliseconds. And they can do this in part because they have extraordinary exoskeletons. And they're really just made up of compliant joints that are tubes and plates connected to one another. Here's a dissection of an abdomen of a cockroach. You see these plates, and you see the compliant membrane.
健壮系统还是防损的。 这一只要爬上墙。 看起来就是快速连贯地竖直向上爬, 但在慢镜头下, 你可以看到些完全不同的东西。 它们是这样的。 它们故意用头撞墙, 这样就不用减速, 可以在75毫秒内就把方向变为向上。 它们可以做到这一点, 一部分原因是它们有非凡的外骨骼。 这些外骨骼其实仅仅是些柔性关节组成, 管状和板状结构 彼此相连。 这是蟑螂腹部的解剖结构。 可以看到这些板,和柔性薄膜。
My engineering colleague at Berkeley designed with his students a novel manufacturing technique where you essentially origami the exoskeleton, you laser cut it, laminate it, and you fold it up into a robot. And you can do that now in less than 15 minutes. These robots, called DASH, for Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod, are highly compliant robots, and they're remarkably robust as a result of these features. They're certainly incredibly damage resistant. (Laughter) They even have some of the behaviors of the cockroaches. So they can use their smart, compliant body to transition up a wall in a very simple way. They even have some of the beginnings of the rapid inversion behavior where they disappear.
我一个在伯克利的工程学同事, 和他的学生们一起设计了 一种新型制造技术, 本质上是折纸型外骨骼, 激光切割,再压片, 然后折成一个机器人, 用不了15分钟就可以完成。 这些机器人,叫做DASH(冲), 全称是动态自行扁平六足机器人, 是具有高度柔性的机器人, 正是因为有了这些特性, 稳固性相当高。 它们当然也具有相当的防损性能。 (笑声) 它们甚至具有了一些蟑螂的行为, 因此它们可以运用自己的智能柔性身体, 转而向墙上爬行, 轻而易举。 它们甚至可以做一点初级的 快速翻身动作 将自己隐藏起来。
Now we want to know why they can go anywhere. We discovered that they can go through three-millimeter gaps, the height of two pennies, two stacked pennies, and when they do this, they can actually run through those confined spaces at high speeds, although you never see it. To understand it better, we did a CT scan of the exoskeleton and showed that they can compress their body by over 40 percent. We put them in a materials testing machine to look at the stress strain analysis and showed that they can withstand forces 800 times their body weight, and after this they can fly and run absolutely normally.
现在我们想知道:为什么它们可以畅通无阻? 我们发现它们可以穿过 三毫米的缝隙, 也就两个1分币摞起来那么高。 而当它们钻进去时, 它们实际上以很高的速度 穿过这些狭窄空间, 虽然你根本看不见。 为了更好地进行了解, 我们对外骨骼进行了CT扫描, 发现它们可以压缩自己的身体 超过40%。 我们把它们放进了一个材料测试仪器 进行应力应变分析, 发现它们可以承受 800倍于体重的压力, 而且压过之后,它们还可以飞可以跑,
So you never know where curiosity-based research will lead, and someday you may want a swarm of cockroach-inspired robots to come at you. (Laughter)
完全正常。 所以你永远不会知道 以好奇心为基础的研究会发现什么, 并且有一天你可能会希望看到 一群蟑螂型仿生机器人 向你冲来。
Thank you.
(笑声)
(Applause)
谢谢大家。