The Spinybot climbs walls

Stanford professor Mark Cutkosky brings us yet another robot that's taken cues from biology, and yet another robot that climbs walls — the Spinybot uses 10 pairs of tiny spines on its toes to scale concrete, stucco or brick. Its tail rests against the wall to provide extra balance, a mounted video camera sends back the visuals, and a 400-gram payload can be delivered to its destination — although this initial version of the Spinybot has some work to be done on the software side before it can autonomously inspect buildings and deliver the goods. Like the Snakebot, one of its proposed applications is surveillance, so if you see one of these hanging out in a dark alley you might want to stash your stash.

[OddManOut @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

On the list of potential applications, one word...

"BOOM"...

[TSW @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

creepiest. robot. ever.

[Jonathan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

Looks too much like an insect, its bound to get smashed with a shoe by accident:)

[er_or @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

no matter how good we are.finally... all come back to nature.

[billflu @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

It's so easy to just turn the camera sideways. hehe

[Beaver @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

Here's a robot with wheels that climbs walls:
http://www.clarifyingtech.com/public/robots/robots_public.html

[Question Answerer @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

This is a nice idea, but the wheeled wall climbing robot mentioned above is more practical, IMHO.

[WOV @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

You know, all of these robots, they demonstrate this cool new hand or walking methodology or other mode of locomotion or sensing or whatever...and we still use autonomous robots for essentially nothing. The semi-autonomous ones we do use (Roomba, mars rovers, UAVS and their underwater friends,) have propulsion, sensing, or locomotion systems Home-Depot-crude by comparison. I honestly feel like the field is really looking at the wrong problems; if one more reseracher claims they're good for "search and rescue," I'm going to go blow the support structures in their lab and send a USAR dog in for them, so they can see just what's really involved. AI is the robot task limiter. When we have an AI that can do something useful, then we can worry about if it can catch fastballs. Until then, wheels and pincers will do the missions we can really contemplate...

[Maikeru @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

Although the wheeled vehicle is more practical in many aspects, from the brief description of their technology it appears that this one sticks to ceilings and walls via suction power (it appears to have some sort of hovercraft like skirt to stay in contact with the surface). However, the fact is that when the wheeled one runs out of power it falls, the one that uses a more passive (and thus more energy efficient) system for clinging doesn't seem like it would. If they equipped the SpinyBot with mechanically locking mechanisms for its legs and have solar panels built in to it, then that thing could probably just sit and watch things for quite a long while.

[bmack @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

The above mentioned climbing robot is actually from http://www.vortexhc.com. That site has videos of the climber in action. The spinybot may be more power efficient but it is also limited by the type of surface that it can operate on.