Steam Powered PackBot

Writing by Evan Ackerman on Tuesday, 19 of February , 2008 at 6:17 am

Okay, so technically this an R/C vehicle and not really a robot… But then, the PackBot isn’t really a robot either, by that definition. Defining what a robot is can be a tricky business. You know what, though, this thing is damn cool and it’s robot-y enough that I’m posting about it anyway:

Not a bad amount of traction for a 3.5kg vehicle powered by a steam engine… If iRobot were to adopt this tech for their PackBots, they could run forever on little more than wood and water, but I doubt they’d react as well to being tossed through windows. The treads and chassis are from a 1/35 scale Leopard battle tank model, and the powerplant is a 45psi Regner model marine steam engine. Aside from that stuff and the R/C equipment, it was all hand built, a process which you can read about (a little bit, at least) on the Questioneering blog. Lots more pics here.

[ Questioneering ] VIA [ Uberreview ]

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Category: Hobby

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