California's Clone Robotics has just posted a video of its full-body Protoclone humanoid robot, and well … it's a wee bit creepy. The prototype's less disturbing Clone descendants, however, could one day be vacuuming our carpets.
We first heard about Clone Robotics three years ago, when the company debuted its Clone hand. Like the production-model Clone robot that the hand will be a part of, the device was designed to closely mimic the form and function of the human body.
This makes sense, given the fact that the Clone is designed to perform household chores such as doing laundry, washing dishes, preparing simple meals and yes, vacuuming carpets. All of these tasks involve utilizing tools that are optimized for use by humans, so a humanlike robot could very well be the best way to go.
You can see the hand in action, in the following video.
Plans call for the Clone to have a full polymer skeleton consisting of all 206 bones in the human body, but with a smaller number of bone fusions. All of the joints are fully articulated.
The robot's limbs are moved via the company's Myofiber artificial muscle technology, which has already been showcased in the Clone hand and in the Clone torso (seen below). As is the case with the human musculoskeletal system, this setup incorporates "muscles" that are anchored to the bones via tendons.
In the Myofiber system – which was inspired by the McKibbin muscle concept – each muscle essentially takes the form of a mesh tube with a balloon inside of it. That balloon expands radially as fluid is pumped into it, forcing the mesh to contract longitudinally. A 500-watt electric pump is the Clone's version of a human heart, pumping hydraulic fluid at a 40-SLPM (standard liters per minute) volumetric flow rate and a 100-psi rating.
The Clone also has its own nervous system, which will ultimately consist of four depth cameras in the skull for vision, 70 inertial sensors for awareness of joint positions, and 320 pressure sensors for muscle-level force feedback. This setup will allow the robot to instantaneously react to visual feedback, and to learn tasks simply by watching its user perform them.
And all of this brings us to the Protoclone video, which Clone Robotics posted this Wednesday.
As can be seen, the robot isn't looking like it's ready to vacuum carpets just yet, but its humanlike movements (and appearance) are impressive nonetheless. According to the company, the Protoclone boasts over 1,000 Myofibers, over 200 sensors, and over a total of 200 degrees of freedom.
Clone Robotics plans on starting production with a limited-run batch of 279 robots, which will be known as Clone Alpha. Preorders should commence later this year. We're still waiting to hear back about pricing.
Source: Clone Robotics
