Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/185129993?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Thursday, 12 January 2012
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
Union Leader Publisher: Gingrich, Santorum, Perry Should Unite to Stop Romney
The publisher of New Hampshire's Union Leader newspaper told Newsmax Sunday that conservative candidates Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry soon may have to muster their forces and unite behind one conservative to challenge GOP frontrunner and moderate Mitt Romney.
The best candidate would be Newt Gingrich, Union Leader Publisher Joe McQuaid, a conservative kingmaker in New Hampshire's politcal scene, said in an exclusive interview.
?At some point, the other conservatives ? Perry, Gingrich, Santorum ? are going to have to say, ?Let?s sit down and draw straws.' That?s the only way you?re going to stop Romney,? McQuaid said in an interview Sunday.
?All the so-called establishment Republicans seem to be moving in Romney?s direction. But I sincerely mean what I wrote on the front page. I think he would be the worst candidate,? McQuaid continued.
?Talk about the one vs. the 99 percent. I just don?t think Romney?s good. He?s so focused on just one of our problems ? the economy ? that versus a guy like Gingrich, who is a real forward thinker and will put out a lot of good ideas on a lot of subjects, it?s going to be tough.?
McQuaid also said that:
? Romney is a virtual shoo-in to win the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, though he doesn?t think he?ll garner the 40 percent many polls have him at right now. The other candidates failed to seriously hurt Romney in Saturday and Sunday?s debates.
? Santorum has failed to move beyond his social conservative base ? a smaller group among Republicans in New Hampshire compared to Iowa ? and hasn?t reached the ?unchurched? fiscal conservatives in the Granite State.
? Gingrich, Paul and Santorum will divide the second-place vote among conservatives in New Hampshire, who probably make up about one third of the voters who will cast ballots on Tuesday.
? Republicans may ultimately accept Romney as the nominee, but it could cost them the election because conservatives will not be motivated to turn out for him.
?Would Republicans accept Romney as the candidate? Yes,? said McQuaid. ?Turn out in droves for him in the fall? No. And I think that?s one of the problems. He does not light conservative fires whatsoever."
On Sunday, McQuaid wrote that ?Romney may be the WORST candidate? to pit against President Barack Obama. ?For one thing, his claimed record as a fiscally conservative governor is as much of a sham as his flipflops on social issues.
?He claims to have cut a $3 billion budget deficit without raising taxes,? McQuaid wrote. ?In fact, the deficit was one-third that size, and this supposed friend to business cut it by raising corporate taxes, along with taxes on New Hampshire commuters, by millions of dollars.
?Romney is a nice, rich man with a tin ear (he may or may not release his income taxes) and plenty of pals in the Republican in-crowd," the editorial continued. "Gingrich is a tough, smart Reagan conservative who brought his party out of 40 years in the wilderness, reformed welfare, and balanced the federal budget.
?Romney would be a disaster as the nominee. Gingrich would make an outstanding president at a time of crisis for America.?
If a Gingrich ran against Romney as the lone conservative candidate, McQuaid said Sunday, he would likely be the frontrunner. But for that to happen now, other coservatives are going to have to make the hard decision to step aside.
?I think there?s a possibility of that,? McQuaid said. ?They (Gingrich and Santorum) both understand that Romney is the guy and I think they may well figure out it?s best to put personality aside and decide who?s going to challenge him. I can see a conversation between Perry and Gingrich and Santorum about it.?
But that won?t change things in New Hampshire said McQuaid, who said he didn?t see any signs of an upset in the making. The weekend?s debates only solidified Romney?s lead.
?Although he (Romney) got whacked a couple of times, I don?t think it?s enough for his apparently overwhelming lead to change that much,? McQuaid said. ?Unless there?s a way for friends of Newt to come up with a lot of bucks to play on the ?pious baloney? line Newt used on Romney Sunday.?
?Romney didn?t fall down flat. The line in the press is going to be he withstood a thumping. Last night it was that nobody laid a glove on him though I don?t think anybody tried. Today it will be he withstood a thumping.
?Gingrich showed he?s the sharpest guy in the room but you only get so many questions thrown your way in one of those things.?
Conservatives make up probably about one-third of those casting their ballots on Tuesday, McQuaid said. Gingrich is weakened because he?s dividing that vote with Santorum, who isn?t a strong candidate.
?I think he (Santorum) is just not that deep,? McQuaid said. ?He doesn?t have that much strength in terms of people backing him. He?s a nice-enough guy, but why we (the Union Leader editorial board) didn?t go with him to begin with is that outside of the social conservatives, I think it?s tough for him to broaden his base.
?New Hampshire will either prove it or disprove it because New Hampshire is not socially conservative like Iowa is,? McQuaid said. ?There are a lot of voters who are unchurched and really care more about the fiscal issues.
?The average conservative voter in New Hampshire is not going to be attracted all that much to Romney. But the average conservative voter here may be a third of the potential turnout here on Tuesday.
?We just got rid of a Democratic legislature and we got a Democratic governor for life," McQuaid explained. "We have a Democratic U.S. Senator. It?s a moderate state. The Republicans tend to be more conservative, but it?s probably just one-third of those Republicans voting.
?I can?t believe the polls, that Romney is going to be as strong as the polls say," McQuaid added. "I just can?t believe that. That?s absurd to me.?
? Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Source: http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/gingrich-romney-santorum-union-leader/2012/01/08/id/423417
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Monday, 9 January 2012
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Sunday, 8 January 2012
Strikeforce postfight: ?King Mo? rips Mousasi and ?Rampage,? Rockhold still miffed about fighting Jardine and Columbus in March is official
LAS VEGAS - The Strikeforce postfight presser was unlike any we've seen in recent memory. The wins either came too easy or Scott Coker needs to bring in some new challenges.
Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal, Luke Rockhold and Tyron Woodley all sounded bored and uninterested about their future with the promotion. That's bizarre, since one of them has successfully defended his title just one time and the other two are without titles.
Lawal hammered on Gegard Mousasi, his possible challenger for the vacant 205-pound title. He was also asked about a crossover fight with UFC and PRIDE legend Quinton "Rampage" Jackson. King Mo responded by calling him a bum, washed up and a B-level actor.
At least King Mo got his dander up a bit. Rockhold couldn't get past the fact that he fought a guy in Jardine, who'd never fought for the promotion before, or down at middleweight.
"He was pretty tough. He was stronger than I thought he'd be in the clinch. I thought I could dominate a little more in the clinch," shrugged Rockhold. "It was somewhat of a test. A lot of guys couldn't finish him and I told you guys I was going to do what nobody else had done."
Rockhold also gave a half-hearted endorsement of Tim Kennedy being a worthy opponent suggesting he wasn't a very good stand-up fighter.
- Coker seemed to the suggest that the Strikeforce to UFC crossovers will no longer happen.
"The crossovers happened when there was a gray area over whether the Showtime contract was going to be renewed," Coker said. "Now that that's out of the way we're committed to building this league. We're going to continue to do that. That means bringing great fighters here. I think that's what you're going to see all year."
- Woodley vehemently defended his winning fight approach. A media member asked the welterweight contender why he was "reluctant" to stand with Jordan Mein.?
"When you coming forward especially with that kind of range you just don't want to engage in crazy combinations. So when he got within my range, I thought I did what I needed to do, take him down, ground and pound him," Woodley said. "I got the Compustrike [numbers] in my pocket if you want to check it out. I don't think I was reluctant to strike with him."
- Lawal and Rockhold, training partners at AKA, have quickly become pals. King Mo warned that if they're fighting on the same card again in the future, it's an automatic two wins. King Mo threw out nicknames like "Cookies and Cream" or "Domino."
- Strikeforce announced it'll be returning on Mar. 3 in Columbus, Oh. Four fights are officially booked for the Nationwide Arena. Ronda Rousey will challenge Miesha Tate for her 135-pound women's title. KJ Noons will battle Josh Thomson while Paul Daley faces Kazuo Misaki. Sarah Kaufman, another 135-pound contender will face Alexis Davis.
- Coker said the female title fight will not be the main event. The hope was that Strikeforce could finish off its heavyweight Grand Prix that night. Coker didn't sound optimistic about Daniel Cormier's broken hand being ready in time. The fight is eight weeks out and Cormier still hasn't been cleared by doctors.
- Some in the media were surprised that Daley was still fighting under Zuffa management. Coker simply said sometimes fighters lose their cool in the heat of the moment, referencing the sucker punch that Daley landed on Josh Koscheck at UFC 113. Daley was cut by Dana White, who said he'd never fight for the UFC again.
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Saturday, 7 January 2012
Yahoo names PayPal's Thompson as CEO (Reuters)
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) ? Yahoo Inc named PayPal President Scott Thompson as its chief executive on Wednesday, hoping the well-regarded Internet technology and e-commerce expert will replicate his success at eBay Inc and turn around the struggling company.
Thompson, credited with driving growth at eBay's online payments division PayPal, joins Yahoo during a period of turmoil, as the company plows ahead with a strategic review in which discussions have included the possibility of being sold, taken private or broken up.
Yahoo shares finished Wednesday's regular trading session down 3 percent at $15.78, as Wall Street assessed how Thompson's hiring would affect the hopes of some investors that Yahoo would be sold or spin off its Asian assets, as well as how Thompson's background fits in with Yahoo's core online media business.
"It's a positive outcome, but not as positive as a sale of the company," said Lawrence Haverty, a fund manager with GAMCO investors, which owns Yahoo shares.
"The risk element is that his background was in payments. And this is not a payment company; it's a marketing, technology company," he said.
Thompson, a former Visa payments software platform designer, joins the company four months after the firing of previous CEO Carol Bartz as the one-time Web powerhouse Yahoo struggles to compete with newer heavyweights Google Inc and Facebook.
"I'm from Boston, we're the underdogs since the beginning of time. Hopefully that spirit has held through. I like doing complicated, very difficult, very challenging things," Thompson said in an interview.
Thompson, who takes over on January 9, will also join Yahoo's board. He ran eBay's PayPal since early 2008, and was previously its chief technology officer. Under his leadership, Yahoo said PayPal increased its user base from 50 million to more than 104 million active users. PayPal processed $29 billion in payments in the third quarter of 2011.
EBay's shares fell 3.8 percent as analysts said the online retailer would miss the respected Internet executive.
EBay Chief Executive John Donahoe told staff in an internal memo that Thompson's move was a "shock."
"Scott informed me Tuesday afternoon, saying that despite his passion for PayPal, this was an opportunity he felt he had to take," Donahoe said.
At PayPal, Thompson was known as a leader who was not afraid to make bold strategic bets. He came up with the idea of taking PayPal beyond its online stronghold and into the physical world by allowing PayPal payments in retail stores -- an opportunity analysts believe could prove much bigger than its existing business.
That kind of strategic risk-taking could be particularly useful at Yahoo. The Sunnyvale, California-based company, whose services include mail, search, news and photo-sharing, was a Web pioneer that grew rapidly in the 1990s. But in recent years, Yahoo has struggled to maintain its relevance and advertising revenue in the face of competition from rivals Google and Facebook.
"They really need that push to the next level," said Ryan Jacob, chairman and chief investment officer of Jacob Funds, which includes the Jacob Internet Fund and counts Yahoo as one of its largest positions.
"Ideally what they would do is rather than just follow where today's Internet leaders are moving, try to really be on that front edge," he said, citing Yahoo's need be better positioned in mobile, social networking and other fast-growing technology trends.
During a conference call on Wednesday, Thompson cited mobile as a key area that he expected to focus on at Yahoo, and he said he viewed the company's treasure trove data about its users as one of Yahoo's key assets. But he said it was too early to comment on his overall vision for the company.
NOT GOING PRIVATE
Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock told analysts on the joint conference call with Thompson that Yahoo has no intention of being taken private.
"If you want to look at it in a practical way, if you and I were to sit down tomorrow and say let's take this Company private, I think we have one hell of a challenge on our hands to do that," said Bostock.
The decision to appoint a new CEO is not expected to impact the strategic review, which includes Yahoo's ongoing dialogue with both China's Alibaba Group and its Japanese affiliate to slash its stakes in the two companies, sources close to the matter said.
Under the "cash rich split" plan being discussed, Yahoo would effectively transfer most of its 40 percent slice of Alibaba back to the Chinese company and all of its stake in Yahoo Japan to Softbank Corp in return for cash and assets.
A preliminary term sheet has been drawn up that broadly outlines the deal concept, said one of the sources.
"Everyone seems to be in agreement over it," the source said.
The question is whether a definitive agreement can be signed between the parties ahead of March 25 deadline when activist shareholders can submit director nominees to Yahoo's board and waging a proxy battle.
Alibaba has also hired a Washington lobbying firm in a sign that the Chinese e-commerce company would be willing to make a bid for all of Yahoo in the event that talks to unwind their Asian partnership fail.
"If they can successfully complete the Asian asset transactions, in a way that is beneficial to Yahoo shareholders, I think it will buy them some time and they'll have a chance to build for growth," said Jacob, of the Jacob Funds.
In 2008, Yahoo rejected an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft Corp worth about $44 billion. Its share price was subsequently pummeled during the global financial crisis and its current market value is about $20 billion.
Co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down in late 2008 after being severely criticized by investors for his handling of the bid. The company cut thousands of jobs and later agreed to an advertising and search partnership with Microsoft.
RALLYING THE TROOPS
One of Thompson's first orders of business at Yahoo may be to try to rebuild morale inside the nearly 14,000-person company, which has been beset by layoffs, management reorganizations and a revolving door of executive departures.
The company cannot compete with hot Web companies such as Facebook and Twitter when it comes to luring the most sought-after engineers and many of the staffers within the company have tired of the seemingly endless reorganizations and lost their competitive drive, said one Yahoo employee, speaking anonymously.
"There are fundamental cultural issues, there are people who are not motivated to do big things," the Yahoo employee said.
Thompson, 54, who speaks in a thick Boston accent, is described as calm under pressure and adept at energizing his team.
One of his signature management styles involves creating different groups, each tasked with achieving the same goal and pitting them against each other, said one PayPal manager who asked to remain anonymous.
"He's not afraid to experiment," the person said.
"He'll build teams that are both going after the same thing," the person said. The idea is "you guys go after the same thing, whoever does it better wins," the PayPal manager explained.
Thompson said in an interview that Yahoo was in a strong position with its large user base of more than 700 million people.
"The traffic itself that these sites generate is a very big number, the collection of assets that sit below this core business I think are not well understood and clearly have tremendous opportunity to be leveraged as we look forward to the future." (Additional reporting by Alistair Barr and Nadia Damouni; editing by Maureen Bavdek, Gunna Dickson, Bernard Orr and Andre Grenon)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120105/bs_nm/us_yahoo
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Friday, 6 January 2012
File:US Navy 041103-M-6237R-012 Cpl. James Wilkins, of Bellville, Texas, a rifleman assigned to 1st Battalion, 23rd Marines, provides perimeter security as a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter lands.jpg
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Source: commons.wikimedia.org --- Wednesday, January 04, 2012
removed Category:Military units and formations of the United States Marine Corps ; added Category:23rd Marine Regiment (United States) using HotCat ? Older revision Revision as of 04:10, 5 January 2012 Line 16: Line 16: [[Category:CH-53E Super Stallion]] [[Category:CH-53E Super Stallion]] ? [[Category:Military units and formations of the United States Marine Corps]] + [[Category:23rd Marine Regiment (United States)]] [[Category:M16 rifle]] [[Category:M16 rifle]] ...
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Leaping lizards and dinosaurs inspire robot design
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Public release date: 4-Jan-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Robert Sanders
rsanders@berkeley.edu
510-643-6998
University of California - Berkeley
Robots, like lizards, need a tail to remain upright when they stumble during leap
Leaping lizards have a message for robots: Get a tail!
University of California, Berkeley, biologists and engineers including undergraduate and graduate students studied how lizards manage to leap successfully even when they slip and stumble, and found that swinging the tail upward is the key to preventing a forward pitch that could send them head-over-heels into a tree.
The scientists subsequently added a tail to a robotic car they named Tailbot and discovered that it's not as simple as throwing your tail in the air. Robots and lizards have to adjust the angle of their tail just right to counteract the effect of the stumble. Given an actively controlled tail, even robots can make a leap and remain upright.
"We showed for the first time that lizards swing their tail up or down to counteract the rotation of their body, keeping them stable," said team leader Robert J. Full, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology. "Inspiration from lizard tails will likely lead to far more agile search-and-rescue robots, as well as ones having greater capability to more rapidly detect chemical, biological or nuclear hazards."
Agile therapod dinosaurs like the velociraptor depicted in the movie Jurassic Park may also have used their tails as stabilizers to prevent forward pitch, Full said. Their tail movement is illustrated in a prescient sequence from the 1993 movie in which the animated animal leaps from a balcony onto a T. rex skeleton while chasing the lead characters.
"Muscles willing, the dinosaur could be even more effective with a swing of its tail in controlling body attitude than the lizards," Full said.
Full and his laboratory colleagues, including both engineering and biology students, will report their discoveries online on Jan. 5 in advance of publication in the Jan. 12 print edition of the journal Nature. The paper's first author, mechanical engineering graduate student Thomas Libby, also will report the results on Jan. 7 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Charleston, South Carolina.
From gecko toe hairs to tails
Full's research over the past 20 years has revealed how gecko toe hairs allow the animals to climb smooth vertical surfaces and, more recently, how their tails help keep them from falling when their feet slip and allow them to right themselves in mid-air. The research reported this week shows how the tail is used in leaping, providing inspiration for robots that can deal with tumbles that are inevitable if, for example, they are exploring rubble during search and rescue operations.
The new research tested a 40-year-old hypothesis that the two-legged theropod dinosaurs the ancestors of birds used their tails as stabilizers while running or dodging obstacles or predators. In Full's teaching laboratory, students noticed a lizard's recovery after slipping during a leap and thought a study of stumbling would be a perfect way to test the value of a tail.
In a research-based teaching lab associated with UC Berkeley's Center for interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research (CiBER), Full and his students used high-speed videography and motion capture to record how a red-headed African Agama lizard handled leaps from a platform with different degrees of traction, from slippery to easily gripped sandpaper.
They coaxed the lizards to run down a track, vault off an obstacle and land on a vertical surface with a shelter on top. When the friction on the obstacle was reduced, lizards slipped, potentially causing their body to spin out of control.
When the researchers saw how the lizard used its tail to counteract the spin, they created a mathematical model as well as Tailbot to better understand the animal's skills. With a tail but no feedback from sensors about body position, Tailbot took a nose dive when driven off a ramp, which mimicked a lizard's take-off. When body attitude was sensed and fed back to the tail motor, however, Tailbot was able to stabilize its body in midair. The actively controlled tail effectively redirected the angular momentum of the body into the swing of the tail, just as with leaping lizards, Full said.
Inertial assisted robotics
Tailbot's design pushed the boundaries of control in robotics in an area researchers call inertial assisted robotics, Full said, which drew the attention of attendees at last October's meeting of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Their paper, presented by Libby and fellow mechanical engineering graduate student Evan Chang-Siu, was one of five finalists in a field of more than 2,000 robot studies presented at the meeting.
"Engineers quickly understood the value of a tail," Libby said, noting that when he dropped Tailbot nose-down, it was able to right itself before it had dropped a foot. "Robots are not nearly as agile as animals, so anything that can make a robot more stable is an advancement, which is why this work is so exciting."
Full and his students are now investigating the role of the tail in controlling pitch, roll and yaw while running.
Full is enthusiastic about the interplay between biologists and engineers fostered in the CiBER lab, which provides undergraduate students with an opportunity to conduct cutting-edge research in teams with graduate students where each team experiences the benefits of how biologists and engineers approach a problem.
"This paper shows that research-based teaching leads to better learning and simultaneously can lead to cutting-edge research," Full said. "It also shows the competitive advantage of interdisciplinary approaches and how involvement of undergraduates in research can lead to innovation."
Last year, Full briefed the United States House of Representative's Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education Caucus on this very topic.
"Learning in the context of original discovery, finding out something that no one has ever know before, really motivated me," wrote former UC Berkeley integrative biology undergraduate Talia Moore, now a graduate student in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. "This research-based lab course showed me how biologists and engineers can work together to benefit both fields."
###
UC Berkeley coauthors include Full, Libby and Chang-Siu, along with the Department of Integrative Biology undergraduate Deborah Li; former integrative biology undergraduate Talia Moore, now a graduate student in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University; and graduate students Ardian Jusufi in the Department of Integrative Biology and Daniel Cohen in the Department of Bioengineering.
The work was funded by the National Science Foundation, including NSF's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, and the Micro Autonomous Systems Technologies (MAST) consortium, a large group of researchers funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory that is focused on creating autonomous sensing robots.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 4-Jan-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Robert Sanders
rsanders@berkeley.edu
510-643-6998
University of California - Berkeley
Robots, like lizards, need a tail to remain upright when they stumble during leap
Leaping lizards have a message for robots: Get a tail!
University of California, Berkeley, biologists and engineers including undergraduate and graduate students studied how lizards manage to leap successfully even when they slip and stumble, and found that swinging the tail upward is the key to preventing a forward pitch that could send them head-over-heels into a tree.
The scientists subsequently added a tail to a robotic car they named Tailbot and discovered that it's not as simple as throwing your tail in the air. Robots and lizards have to adjust the angle of their tail just right to counteract the effect of the stumble. Given an actively controlled tail, even robots can make a leap and remain upright.
"We showed for the first time that lizards swing their tail up or down to counteract the rotation of their body, keeping them stable," said team leader Robert J. Full, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology. "Inspiration from lizard tails will likely lead to far more agile search-and-rescue robots, as well as ones having greater capability to more rapidly detect chemical, biological or nuclear hazards."
Agile therapod dinosaurs like the velociraptor depicted in the movie Jurassic Park may also have used their tails as stabilizers to prevent forward pitch, Full said. Their tail movement is illustrated in a prescient sequence from the 1993 movie in which the animated animal leaps from a balcony onto a T. rex skeleton while chasing the lead characters.
"Muscles willing, the dinosaur could be even more effective with a swing of its tail in controlling body attitude than the lizards," Full said.
Full and his laboratory colleagues, including both engineering and biology students, will report their discoveries online on Jan. 5 in advance of publication in the Jan. 12 print edition of the journal Nature. The paper's first author, mechanical engineering graduate student Thomas Libby, also will report the results on Jan. 7 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Charleston, South Carolina.
From gecko toe hairs to tails
Full's research over the past 20 years has revealed how gecko toe hairs allow the animals to climb smooth vertical surfaces and, more recently, how their tails help keep them from falling when their feet slip and allow them to right themselves in mid-air. The research reported this week shows how the tail is used in leaping, providing inspiration for robots that can deal with tumbles that are inevitable if, for example, they are exploring rubble during search and rescue operations.
The new research tested a 40-year-old hypothesis that the two-legged theropod dinosaurs the ancestors of birds used their tails as stabilizers while running or dodging obstacles or predators. In Full's teaching laboratory, students noticed a lizard's recovery after slipping during a leap and thought a study of stumbling would be a perfect way to test the value of a tail.
In a research-based teaching lab associated with UC Berkeley's Center for interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research (CiBER), Full and his students used high-speed videography and motion capture to record how a red-headed African Agama lizard handled leaps from a platform with different degrees of traction, from slippery to easily gripped sandpaper.
They coaxed the lizards to run down a track, vault off an obstacle and land on a vertical surface with a shelter on top. When the friction on the obstacle was reduced, lizards slipped, potentially causing their body to spin out of control.
When the researchers saw how the lizard used its tail to counteract the spin, they created a mathematical model as well as Tailbot to better understand the animal's skills. With a tail but no feedback from sensors about body position, Tailbot took a nose dive when driven off a ramp, which mimicked a lizard's take-off. When body attitude was sensed and fed back to the tail motor, however, Tailbot was able to stabilize its body in midair. The actively controlled tail effectively redirected the angular momentum of the body into the swing of the tail, just as with leaping lizards, Full said.
Inertial assisted robotics
Tailbot's design pushed the boundaries of control in robotics in an area researchers call inertial assisted robotics, Full said, which drew the attention of attendees at last October's meeting of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Their paper, presented by Libby and fellow mechanical engineering graduate student Evan Chang-Siu, was one of five finalists in a field of more than 2,000 robot studies presented at the meeting.
"Engineers quickly understood the value of a tail," Libby said, noting that when he dropped Tailbot nose-down, it was able to right itself before it had dropped a foot. "Robots are not nearly as agile as animals, so anything that can make a robot more stable is an advancement, which is why this work is so exciting."
Full and his students are now investigating the role of the tail in controlling pitch, roll and yaw while running.
Full is enthusiastic about the interplay between biologists and engineers fostered in the CiBER lab, which provides undergraduate students with an opportunity to conduct cutting-edge research in teams with graduate students where each team experiences the benefits of how biologists and engineers approach a problem.
"This paper shows that research-based teaching leads to better learning and simultaneously can lead to cutting-edge research," Full said. "It also shows the competitive advantage of interdisciplinary approaches and how involvement of undergraduates in research can lead to innovation."
Last year, Full briefed the United States House of Representative's Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education Caucus on this very topic.
"Learning in the context of original discovery, finding out something that no one has ever know before, really motivated me," wrote former UC Berkeley integrative biology undergraduate Talia Moore, now a graduate student in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. "This research-based lab course showed me how biologists and engineers can work together to benefit both fields."
###
UC Berkeley coauthors include Full, Libby and Chang-Siu, along with the Department of Integrative Biology undergraduate Deborah Li; former integrative biology undergraduate Talia Moore, now a graduate student in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University; and graduate students Ardian Jusufi in the Department of Integrative Biology and Daniel Cohen in the Department of Bioengineering.
The work was funded by the National Science Foundation, including NSF's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, and the Micro Autonomous Systems Technologies (MAST) consortium, a large group of researchers funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory that is focused on creating autonomous sensing robots.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/uoc--lla123111.php
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