Photo Credit: University of Pennsylvania and Boston Dynamics
Once again nature provides the model for a robot. I have written several posts on this topic in RobotNext. See Nature Inspired Robots and Snakebots in a Building! just to name two.
This machine is a cross between a beaver and a cockroach, and it climbs like a koala. It is called the RiSE V3. See the excerpt below from the post at CNET News by Mark Rutherford.
Here's another offering from Boston Dynamics' zoomorphic line: the RiSE V3, a multi-legged, beaver-tailed robot that can skitter along the ground, shimmy up a pole, and then quietly cling there and stare at you.
The research by Haynes et al was published by the University of Pennsylvania and Boston Dynamics in a paper (PDF) titled Rapid Pole Climbing with a Quadrupedal Robot. Rutherford summarizes the research nicely as follows:
The development team's aim was to reproduce movements they had observed in climbing insects. This is something else that sets this wall climber apart. Most other climbing robots have generally relied on "surface-specific attachment mechanisms," i.e. magnets and suction devices.
Beaver-tailed robot mimics tree-climbing insects
Wed, 20 May 2009 22:32:00 GMT