Snakebots For Everybody

Bleeding Edge

from the forget-the-aibo,-I-want-a-snakebot dept

Gary Brown writes “An update on a new type of robotic, interplanetary probe, called a snakebot. “A snakebot could navigate over rough, steep terrain where a wheeled robotic rover would likely get stuck or topple,” lead snakebot engineer Gary Haith says. NASA’s snakebots are a model of the polybot developed by Mark Yim of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The main body (see 5 actual photos, movie) of a snakebot consists of about 30, identical, hinge-like modules that are linked together in a chain. Snakebots will probably cost only a few hundred dollars each. In fact, the cost of the snakebot is so low that one researcher says there is a possibility of developing a toy version.”