The Sun is BEAMing!
by Darren Ashby

There is a quiet revolution happening in the field of robotics. They are known as BEAM robots. Yeah, right now they seem like kids’ toys or goofy things to try on the workbench on rainy days. But mark my words, these things will change the world. If you’ve never heard of these critters, click here to review my previous article on the subject.

What’s New under the Sun?

Figure 1: Solarbot

My search for applied BEAM robotics started at http://www.solarbotics.com/videos.asp where you can buy your own light-seeking robot kit that needs to find light to survive. The quality is not the best, but you’d swear these things are alive. I especially like the one where the robot gets stuck in a hole. Reminds me of the time my puppy got his head stuck in a shoe. With the will these critters exhibit to survive, it’s readily apparent that BEAM robotics is here to stay.

Say Hello to B.I.O. Bugs.

Figure 2: B.I.O. Bug

It took years for micro-chip powered robot toys to become available to the general public. I remember as a kid how much I wanted a robo-budy 2000. But it wasn’t really a robot, more of a remote controlled R2D2-looking thing. It was neat and all, but it just wouldn’t clean my room without me putting forth more effort to run it than it took to do it myself. B.I.O. bugs won’t clean your room either; they might hide in it somewhere though. And they act more like a bug than you might think. These insects are based on the nervous net of BEAM robotics. I think it is very impressive that these items have gone from an experimenter’s workbench to mass production so quickly. (As far as I know Mark Tilden hasn’t really tried to market his invention, I think Hasbro latched onto it because it works so well.)

Which impresses you more? A toy robot that responds the same way to a given action and uses a 32 bit DSP microprocessor core running hundreds of pages of code? ( Code name Poo-chi. How do you shut the bark off?!) Or a robot that seems to be able to find its way through your messy room in search of the sunny window on the other side? Oh and by the way, it doesn’t have a microprocessor at all. It just uses a few transistors.

Enter, BIG STEEL!

While looking around for robot stuff, I stumbled onto this behemoth,

Figure 3: Dino

This really can’t be classified as a BEAM robot, but it is intended to mimic animals, particularly extinct ones. Disney is gonna have a walking, roaring dinosaur. Invented by Danny Hillis, Dino uses a Pentium 700 MHz processor, FOR EACH LEG! OK, you probably wouldn’t want to use BEAM technology here. Having a 13-foot tall, 11,000-pound metal beast wandering aimlessly around a child-infested amusement park (BEAM robots are known for going wherever they feel like) might be a little unnerving to parents. For now, I’m OK that Dino uses a little logic.

Are You Hungry?

Figure 4: Chew Chew

He’s called Chew Chew, and he eats for power. Feed this train of "radio flyers" sugar cubes till it’s full, and the bacteria in its stomach convert the food into electricity and charge its batteries. (The bacteria is e.coli, which lends credence to the saying, "One man’s disease is another robot's food!")

The reason pure sugar is used is that very little waste is generated. Hmm, I wonder what Milk Duds would make the little wagon-bot do? This poor critter is somewhat of a baby though. It can’t feed itself, and has to let the food digest for a while before moving around. (Kinda like after Thanksgiving dinner.)

What’s Next?

Here’s my take. Start with a gastro-bot, connect it to a bio-bot nervous net and make it the size of dino-bot, then give it the ability to smell chocolate and make little chil’ren-bots. Turn it loose in a couple of well-known theme resorts, and the next thing you know we will have a sugar-lovin’ brontosaurus chasing down little kids for their Milk Duds and reproducing. When the candy is gone, they will turn on their creator out of necessity to survive, and poof! We’ll be gone.

Do you think something similar might of happened to the dinosaurs?

Here are a few other cool links I stumbled onto while researching this article:

www.exn.ca/stories/2000/12/05/55.asp
www.cim.mcgill.ca/~arlweb/
www.ai.mit.edu/projects/leglab/robots/robots.html

Notes

Robo-budy 2000 is not the actual name. I don't remember what it was called, but I loved it till I broke it. If any of you remember the real name of this original robot toy, please let me know. – DA

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