Robot Wars Extreme Destruction Pc
Dimple Belousson
NEW ARENAS, NEW WEAPONS, NEW GAMES
Go straight for the kill and launch into action in arcade style battles or design and construct your own metal menace to fight from tons of parts and weapons.
- 8 awesome new and improved arenas
- 8 different game types including
- Up to 4 player split screen option for multiplayer competitions
- Featuring the deadliest of the US robots, the new RefBot and all-new competitor robots
- Incredible graphics and new levels of realism in robot performance and destruction
Robot Wars - Extreme Destruction - official game of the ultimate and original Robot warring TV series.
Summary: As robots appear in more everyday environments, they will have new opportunities to enhance the lives of the people around them. One reason why this potential is exciting is that robots, compared to "non-embodied" technology solutions (such as a phone, smart watch, computer, or AI assistant), have been shown to be more motivating and peer-like. In challenging interaction scenarios such as encouraging physical activity or other healthy habits, this type of clout can make or break the success of a technology-based intervention. Within the realm of robot-mediated interventions itself, many additional aspects of robotic system design merit further attention to enhance the potential for success. For example, robots' natural sound profiles often include flaws that repel users, and robots have a bad sense of humor. My research group is dedicated to better understanding nonverbal (and comedy-based verbal) robot expression, and designing effective tools for improving and effectively leveraging these communication modalities. To date, my research program has applied and thoroughly investigated one resulting family of assistive robots for early motor interventions in the child-robot interaction domain. We observed that these robots can successfully teach and reinforce particular types of movement (such as a leg-extension kick that is important for taking one's first steps), in addition to encouraging more physical activity than other intervention approaches. My ongoing and future research aims to create everyday robotic systems to help people live healthier and happier lives in additional intervention scenarios.
Dr. Naomi T. Fitter is an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering at Oregon State University. Her past degrees include a B.S. and B.A. in mechanical engineering and Spanish from the University of Cincinnati and an M.S.E. and Ph.D. in robotics and mechanical engineering and applied mechanics from the University of Pennsylvania, and she completed her postdoctoral work at the University of Southern California. As a member of the Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute, Dr. Fitter aims to equip robots with the ability to engage and empower people in interactions from playful high-fives to challenging physical therapy routines.
HOW CAN INSECTS WALK UPSIDE-DOWN?
THE BIOMECHANICS OF BEETLE'S WET AND HAIRY ADHESIVE PADS
Speaker: Prof. Tristan Gilet
University of Liege, Belgium
Theme: Solids, materials, and Fluids
Abstract: The miniaturization of pick-and-place robotics is currently limited by the challenge of controlling adhesion forces on a wide variety of substrates and on very short timescales. Insects have already solved this challenge: most of them can walk on about any surface in any orientation. Thanks to the adhesive pads on their tarsi, they generate appropriate adhesion and friction forces, and they can cancel them a fraction of a second later. This talk will be focused on the hairy pads of beetles. I will mainly discuss two ingredients that guarantee a robust, efficient, and controllable adhesion to different substrates: compliant microstructures (the hair tips), and the presence of a liquid secretion. I will first present in vivo experiments on the walk kinematics and mechanics of these hair tips. Our observations provide evidence that the secretion forms wedge-shaped liquid bridges between the compliant hair tips and the substrate. We could show that the hair tips are in elastocapillary equilibrium and that the negative relative pressure in the bridges provides a passive way of regulating the amount of secretion (and thereby the level of adhesion). In a second time, I will present experimental measurements on a scaled-up physical model of one hair tip. The net adhesive force generated through the interplay of capillary and elastic forces is measured as a function of the proximity of the hair to the surface. I will finally discuss a beam model that captures well the experimental data and provides further insights into the mechanical behavior of these wet hair tips.
Tristan Gilet obtained an MSc in Aerospace Engineering (ISAE, Toulouse) in 2004 and a MSc in Engineering Physics (ULige) in 2005. He completed a PhD in Physics in 2009 (ULige) on the dynamics of droplets in various contexts. He was then appointed as an instructor at the Dept. of Mathematics at MIT (Cambridge, MA) for two years. Since 2011, he is an assistant professor and the head of the Microfluidics Lab at the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering of the University of Liege (Belgium). The research of the Microfluidics Lab is focused on microscale flows involving surface tension, both in biological and engineering contexts. Current research projects mostly focus on drop impacts in various natural occurrences, droplet microfluidics, and centrifugal microfluidics.
Abstract: Flow separation from lifting surfaces is generally associated with performance losses resulting in decreased lift or increased drag. Hence, wind turbine designers strive to avoid blade separation in order to maximize wind turbine power. In contrast, our research exploits the management or control of separation for wind energy generation, with applications to horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs), vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) and vibrating wind energy harvesters (WEHs). On HAWTs, I will show how the forced variation of flow separation can be used to control power and loads under extreme changes in the relative velocity vector (magnitude and direction). On VAWTs, I will show how we design the turbine blades to stall dynamically, such that dynamic stall is responsible for energy generation. Finally, I will describe how we periodically control separation on bluff bodies to excite wake instabilities responsible for energy generation on vibrating WEHs.
Summary: The emergence of micro-, nano-, and molecularly-tailored multimaterial systems, particularly those enabled by additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, facilitates the design of new and enhanced functionalities. Building from advances in various disciplines, including decades-long work on bulk microfiber heterogeneous composites, multimaterial and multifunctional 3D and 4D printing technologies offer the possibility of cost-effective automation of the fabrication process and provide greater flexibility for locally tailoring the material architecture and/or properties in three-dimensions. This talk will provide an overview of cross-disciplinary research activities of our group =: (i) tailored multilayers (compliance-tailoring, morphology-tailoring and surfacetailoring); (ii) nature-inspired materials (nacreous materials, and camouflage composites); (iii) nanocomposites and 4D printing (nano-biocomposites, piezoresistive self-sensing nanocomposites, and morphing structures); (iv) multiscale and multifunctional fiber composites (hierarchical/multiscale composites, and self-sensing cellular composites) and (v) architected materials and metamaterials (2D and 3D mechanical and multifunctional architected lattices for energy absorbing structures, smart medical devices, energy storage, thermal management, and EMI shields). Manipulating matter at relevant length scales, in 3D and 4D, enables strain-, stress-, and functional engineering towards enhanced performance, but also opens new opportunities in fabrication. The convergence of emerging micro- and nano-scale AM techniques, as well as the ability to design nano- and micro-architected hierarchical structures with more tightly controlled geometry, will allow the development of new classes of materials with unprecedented properties optimised for location-specific structural and/or functional requirements suitable for bio, defence, energy, automotive, and aerospace applications.
Summary: Touch is a central component of humans' interactions with others and with the world. While robots are increasingly being developed to work alongside people, their capacity to interact with humans through touch is yet underdeveloped. This talk will explore why this may be the case, why it matters, and how robots can be made more physically interactive for better human-robot collaborations.
Summary: Design reviews are intended to provide critical feedback during a design process so that an improved artifact will be realized, and, in educational settings, so that the design process employed will be improved. Research indicates that student reviewers may be reticent to provide authentic feedback in a traditional question and answer format. This talk will describe a simple method that is effective in generating a greater quantity of comments in a more candid and open way preferred by designers and reviewers.
Feedback plays an important role in the design process. In formal design review situations, presenters receive and respond to questions from reviewers. It is hypothesized that structural and social barriers may complicate and degrade the feedback process. In this talk, the speaker examines the peer feedback process for the design reviews and culminating presentations of a preliminary conceptual design project in an introduction to design, manufacturing, and management course, E4, at Harvey Mudd College. Student design teams present their design process and the resulting design artifact to their class section. The other students in the section provide feedback to the team. Teams presented their design reviews as either live presentations or via video and were reviewed by teams through either live oral questions and answers or in written comments using a handwritten or online form. The specificity and motivation from the instructors for feedback also varied by section. The video section responded to evaluator comments in class and was able to receive clarification about the comments. The authors of this study are able to note the differences in quantity of feedback, the type of feedback, and the response to the feedback by the design teams. The study suggests that (1) students in this course may not be open with their feedback during oral question and answer periods, (2) that simple tools such as written feedback will gather more information than question and answer periods and (3) that class time may be used to discuss feedback rather than for presentations effectively to provide better feedback and interaction. Additional insight on the effectiveness of this technique with respect to gender differences and expectations regarding feedback will be discussed time permitting.