Animal behavior turned into robots and more at 4th international AMAM symposium

CLEVELAND—Building a machine that moves like a cockroach, salamander, fish or another creature is no easy task. Over 100 of the world’s pioneering engineers, biologists and neuroscientists who have contributed to building biologically inspired robots will be on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, June 1-6, to discuss new developments in the field of biorobotics during the Fourth International Symposium on Adaptive Motion of Animals and Machines (AMAM).

It’s science fiction of yesteryear turned into today’s reality. A Robot Zoo of crawling, leaping, creeping and swimming mechanical devices with names like “AMOS-WD06”, “Robot III” and “AmphiBot” will be on public display on Thursday, June 5, at Cleveland’s Great Lakes Science Center to showcase how scientists and engineers have collaborated and translated animal behavior and movement dynamics into mechanical devices.

Case Western Reserve researchers like Roy Ritzmann from biology and Roger Quinn from engineering have collaborated to build robots based on how cockroaches move. The event is organized to create a maximum of interactions between the biologists, engineers and neuroscientists working on robots, said Ritzmann, the symposium’s general chair.

The event’s keynote speakers include:

• Paolo Dario from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (ARTS Lab-Advance Robotics Technology and Systems Laboratory) has been directly involved in a number of robotic projects, with one of the latest being computer assisted surgery and rehabilitation.

• Hiroshi Kimura from the Kyoto Institute of Technology (Division of Mechanical and System Engineering) is developing a series of biologically inspired robots called “Tekken” with the capabilities of walking over irregular terrains.

• Hunter Peckham from Case Western Reserve University’s department of biomedical engineering and executive director of the Cleveland FES Center is building on the information learned about animal motions and behaviors to refine development of functional electronic systems that restore movement to humans with loss of movement due to spinal cord injuries.

• Roger Quinn, co-chair of the symposium, and from Case Western Reserve’s department of mechanical and aerospace engineering, is director of the Biologically-Inspired Robotics Laboratory, one of the pioneering labs in the country with robots based on cockroaches, crickets, ants and Whegs™ (robots with hybrid wheel-legs).