Past News

Introducing XRL and Canid
April 26th, 2012
Two new robots, XRL and Canid, were introduced at the SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing Conference in Baltimore, MD. XRL is a lighter version of X-RHex designed to be highly agile, and Canid is a quadruped with an actively controlled compliant spine.

FLL 2012
January 28th, 2012
Deniz, Avik, Justin and Jorge attended the First Lego League robotics competition for middle schoolers and demo-ed the X-RHex robots to attendees.

SSRR 2011
November 4th, 2011
Aaron Johnson presented a paper at the IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR2011) on Hill and Stair Climbing in Kyoto, Japan.

RHex Box
May 9th, 2011
Matt Hale and Tim Hennelley have added an Xbox Kinect to X-RHex to make what they call “RHex Box” as a class project. Check out a video of person following and their website.

TePRA 2011
April 11th, 2011
Avik De, Goran Lynch, and Aaron Johnson presented a paper at the IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Practical Robot Applications (TePRA2011) on Motor Selection in Woburn, MA.

ISER 2010
December 17th, 2010
In December, Clark Haynes presented a paper, On the Comparative Analysis of Locomotory Systems with Vertical Travel, at the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics in Delhia, India.

IROS 2010
October 21st, 2010
Aaron Johnson and Clark Haynes presented a paper at the IEEE Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS2010) on Disurbance Detection, Identification, and Recovery in Taipei, Taiwan.

ICABB 2010
October 15th, 2010
Goran Lynch made a sacrifice in the name of academic research and travelled to the first International Conference on Applied Bionics and Biomechanics in Venice, Italy, to present recent research (and on scholarly commons) in collaboration with biology professor Larry Rome on the effects of sprawl angle on vertical climbing.

New Student
August 9th, 2010
Kod*lab would like to welcome our newest grad student, Avik De!

Desert Testing
May 4, 2010
RHex once again made a trip to the desert to test its unique style of locomotion. Through automated tuning algorithms, the robot learned new efficient gaits for sandy and rocky terrains, much like its cousin, SandBot. A video of the robot in action can be found here.

Outreach at “It’s a Bug’s World”
March 23, 2010
Two members of Kod*lab, Deniz Ilhan and Goran Lynch, traveled to Annapolis, Maryland to promote biologically inspired robotics at an Entomological Society of America event. 450 guests of all ages were well entertained, and, we hope, inspired. Click here to see pictures.

New Visiting Scholar
February 3, 2010
Kod*lab would like to welcome Aaron Peck as a visiting scholar for the spring semester!

X-RHex
January 20th, 2010
Kod*lab is pleased to introduce our newest robot, X-RHex! With many improvements over past versions of RHex, X-RHex has already been used in the lab for several months, and has even proven itself in the Mojave Desert. It can also use a variety of modular payloads to add new sensor or other capabilities. You can read more about X-RHex here, or watch the YouTube video here.

Summer Research Assistants
October 1, 2009
Kod*lab was very active this summer, with a total of 7 undergraduates contributing to our research on a variety of topics. Each has written up an end of summer report, and you can read them here: Ani, Ben, Derek, Matt, Phillip, Ryan, Sarah. Congratulations everyone on a productive summer!

IROS 2009
September 16, 2009
We will be presenting our paper, A Self-Exciting Controller for High-Speed Vertical Running, at IROS 2009. The conference runs from October 11–15, 2009, in St. Louis, MO.

ISRR 2009
July 28, 2009
We will be presenting new work on the topology and control of legged gaits in our paper, Gait Transitions for Quasi-Static Hexapedal Locomotion on Level Ground, at ISRR 2009 in Lucerne, Switzerland, on August 31, 2009.

RHex in the Desert
July 4, 2009
The RHex robot recently completed a trip to the desert southwest to evaluate the use of legged robots in adverse terrains. Kodlab members outfitted a Research RHex robot with a newly designed carbon fiber shell and white coating to deal with heat, dust, and rocky terrain encountered. Read more about Desert RHex.

Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students
May 20, 2009
Goran Lynch, Ph.D. student in Kodlab, has been awarded a “Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students”, awarded in a reception on April 28th. Congratulations!

ICRA 2009
April 20, 2009
We will be presenting our paper, Rapid Pole Climbing with a Quadrupedal Robot, a joint effort with Boston Dynamics, at ICRA 2009 in Kobe, Japan, on May 15, 2009.

SandBot in IEEE Spectrum
April 4, 2009
SandBot, our hexapedal platform to study locomotion in sand (with colleagues at Georgia Tech), appears as the cover story of this month’s IEEE Spectrum (local copy).

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