BYU student creates robot capable of lifting heavy items

PROVO, Utah (KSTU) — For BYU graduate student Curtis Johnson, a simple quest guided him to create a robot with a novel approach: What if robots were more helpful?

Johnson and his mentors at the BYU Robotics and Dynamic Lab created “Baloo,” a robot that can interact with the world using its whole body.

“What if the robot could push with its shoulder or push things out of the way with its whole body? That expands its capabilities,” Johnson said, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering.

Johnson says Baloo can lift large unwieldy objects like ladders, kayaks, car tires, chairs, and heavy boxes. Researchers added that the robot can do so safely as Baloo’s whole structure is flexible and filled with air.

That flexible structure doesn’t only allow for more movement, it can also improve the safety of people working with it.

Johnson says that robots that are made with rigid structures and exclusively hard components, “either break the robot or break you, whichever one is stronger.”

Baloo is part of a collaborative effort between BYU mechanical engineering professors Marc Killpack and John Salmon and is funded by the National Science Foundation. The pair recently published a study on the physical human-human co-manipulation of bulky or heavy objects.

One of the study’s co-authors, Shaden Moss, also completed his master’s thesis which helped program a robot to follow an object manipulated by a person in a VR headset.

Moss analyzed how the stiffness in the arm of the robot affected the way people completed tasks such as moving a table in various directions.

Researchers hope that Baloo can be used in construction or disaster relief.

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