Here is a snake for those of you that don’t like reptiles! It’s not slimy (though snakes never are), and it can’t bite, but it does move like one! Perhaps it even moves better than a snake because it knows how to roll instead of just sliding. This prototype it being studied by the Biorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University. This robotic snake has the ability to climb up poles and inside of pipes and perform reconnaissance missions that no human could ever do. This snake robot is even capable of crawling, climbing, and swimming! That’s right, this robot will even climb up cracks or pipes or even swim through water like a real snake! This robot is designed using servos purchasable at hobby stores with some slight modifications. The chassis is built using a simple aluminum frame even you could make. Using common easy to purchase parts make these robots lower cost and easier to repair. Lower cost means it’s easier for people to buy them, and may possibly allow them to be commercially available. But the other cool part is that it may even be cheap enough to build your own simple prototype using the Parallax Propeller chip. The Parallax Propeller chip is perfectly suitable for this application because it even supports video which is necessary on this type of reconnaissance mission. Go for it, I think it a good idea.
It was long ago determined that simple fish have developed one of the most efficient ways to move through water. The fish shape is completely hydrodynamic and has a large amount of surface area to push water with. Over the years many people have tried to replicate the motion of fish, and most have failed or just made something that looks robotic. I think the makers of this robotic carp deserve great kudos because this robot fish looks very real when swimming. This robotic carp is a research project studied by the Essex University and is being funded and on display at the London Aquarium. It most likely run off lithium ion batteries because batteries are most often the thing that stunts our technology. We always want things that are smaller and faster, but batteries ofter keep us from doing that. Fortunately we have finally gotten to the point in our technology that we can design things we couldn’t before, like this robot fish! I love the skin they put on this thing, it looks silicone based, but yet it’s shiny.
