Boston Dynamics Developing SquishBot
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 20 of April , 2009 at 1:38 am
A few weeks ago, we posted about a robot octopus tentacle that was completely squishy, with no rigid parts. Boston Dynamics is getting in on the fun and is working on a SquishBot of its own; it’ll be able to transform from soft to hard and change its critical dimensions by up to a factor of 10 to stuff itself into cracks and crevices.
The Boston Dynamics team is joined by researchers from MIT who have experience developing “slug robots.” Slug robots, you say? Of course I had to scour the internets for those MIT slug robots. And here you go:
This is Robosnail, from MIT back in 2003. Snails have two primary methods of locomotion: undulating, and galloping (!). Galloping, apparently, is when “like an inchworm, the animal sticks the front of its foot to a surface (thanks to suction and friction from the mucus), and then draws the rest of its body up behind it.” Robosnail doesn’t gallop, but it does undulate: “by pushing [fluid] backwards, they can build up large pressures in the thin layer of mucus. The sum of all these pressures then pushes the snail forward.” The mucus fluid in this case is Laponite, a mixture of clay and water, and it’s viscous enough that Robotsnail can even undulate across a ceiling.
[ Boston Dynamics SquishBot ]
[ MIT Robosnail ]
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Category: Biorobotics
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