Video of the day: Disney’s new RC robot scales walls like Spiderman

For those itching to pilot a highly mobile robot without the all the legal red tape, the VertiGo may be the best drone alternative—it doesn’t fly, but it can certainly climb walls. Developed by Disney Research in conjunction with ETH Zurich, VertiGo is a fun-looking remote-controlled vehicle capable of scaling vertical walls as easily as flat terrestrial surfaces.

VertiGo uses two tiltable propellers with two degrees of freedom to generate a counter-thrust against the wall and eliminate the pull of gravity. The combination of steerable front wheels, with an adjustable level of thrust, allows VertiGo to easily scale uneven surfaces like brick and vinyl without losing traction. The result, as witnessed in the video below, is a gravity-defying preview of what will inevitably become one of the hottest gadgets of 2016, or whenever it makes the cut; Disney has yet to disclose its intentions, so we can only speculate that it’ll eventually wind up as a consumer product.

Opting to use two propellers enables VertiGo to flip directly on to the wall by generating upward thrust with the front propeller and a backward thrust with the bottom. This allows it to swap between flat and vertical surfaces with minimal effort, creating what appears to be a very fun RC car.

Entertainment factor aside, it would not be surprising to eventually see the designs inspired by VertiGo disseminating into search and rescue applications; such high levels or traversal are unparalleled for exploring tight spaces inaccessible to humans.

Source: DisneyResearch