Everyone remembers the iconic images of C3P0 walking across the desert of Tatooine in Star Wars.
However, robots, especially humanoid robots aren't really capable of navigating on sand or beaches. The sand particles don't provide a stable enough surface, and oftentimes the robot's feet will sink into the sand. Robotic balancing systems are designed with hard, stable surfaces in mind, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what sand has to offer. What's more, the balance system gets into conflict with the robot's built-in accelerometers, which send it messages that its feet aren't steady.
To fix the problem, engineers led by Shunsuke Komizunai of Japan's Tohoku University in Sendai, researched how balancing systems can compensate for sand's unusual characteristics. To do so, they made a model robot foot about the same size as an adult human's - and made it "tread" with various levels of force in a box full of sand to represent robots of different weights. Last month they presented results they had collected from accelerometers and other sensors at the eighth international conference on flow dynamics, also in Sendai.
The team plans to simulate sand walking in humanoid robots and then adjust control software to cope with different types of sand or loose soil.
New Scientist
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