UC Davis recently announced it had signed an exclusive license agreement with Barobo Inc. of West Sacramento to commercialize iMobot, a modular robot that its inventors believe will have applications from education to search-and-rescue.

Graham Ryland and Harry Cheng developed the robot and founded the company. Cheng is a UCD professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Ryland is an alumnus who studied in Cheng’s Integration Engineering Laboratory.

“Robots currently on the market are not flexible enough to be used for a wide range of applications, which is where this new modular robot technology makes things possible,” said Graham Ryland, who serves as president of Barobo, on the UCD website.

A standardized robot platform for teaching and research can reduce the time to create new robotic prototypes, the inventors say.

The iMobot’s brick-shaped modules can be linked together to create a snake that can move through rough terrain. It can be formed into a sort of truck that can roll along smooth surfaces. Or it can take on any of countless other shapes.

Each module features two joints at its center and wheels on each end, allowing four degrees of freedom. A module can crawl like an inchworm, move on its wheels, even raise one end up to form a camera stand.

A three-pound prototype shown to reporters in March was equipped with an on-board computer with a 400 megahertz Linux operating system, motor and poker chip-sized connectors onto which anything from a gripper arm to a microphone can be attached, along with a wide array of sensors.

When connected, all modules talk both to each other and any sensors attached to them. They can even self-assemble. A simple hand-held device, like a PDA with wireless connectivity, can be used to control them as a group or individually.

Online: http://barobo.com.

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