Climbing walls like a spider would be cool, except that some walls are probably pretty gross. And you’d have to like, touch them.
Climbing-capable robots have been around for a while now, but none accomplish the task quite like the Treebot. This inchworm-like automaton, built by researchers at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, is essentially blind. It relies on tactile feedback from its front and rear gripping claws, rather than through a sophisticated visual mapping system, to tell where it’s going. While it’s slower to the summit than other robotic climbers, the Treebot is among the first to be able to successfully navigate complex branch systems. Well, there goes my Robopacalypse hiding spot.[IEEE Spectrum]
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Afraid of heights? These may not be the videos for you. Alain Robert, the real-life Spider-Man, scales towering monuments across the globe – sans ropes, or security of any kind, for that matter. Don’t slip, dude!
Yesterday afternoon, “Skyscraper Man” Dan Goodwin, also known as “Spider Dan”, climbed the 58-storey Millennium Tower in San Francisco to raise awareness about terrorism and cancer. Spider Dan’s means of conveyance: suction cups, of course.
Here are four robots that leave me unsettled in four unique ways. The robots in this clip, developed at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, each employ their own distinctive method of wall climbing. This snail-inspired bot uses hot glue.
Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you: This is a hydraulic excavator–a machine that weights 21,570 to 34,700 kilos–climbing a column using its front arm. Seriously, after hours searching in the web, I really don’t know where this came from or when it was taken. I don’t even know if it’s real, and I’m sure that a hundred people will probably exclaim: “Photoshop!” But it looks real and I want to know what is going on here and how is this possible at all. [Dark Roasted Blend]
