Snake robot can be thrown for quick climb deployment

A team at Carnegie Mellon University’s Biorobotics Lab has updated their popular snake robot and given it the ability to reflexively grab onto objects it gets thrown onto.

CMU’s snake robot demonstrates being thrown at and grabbing on to an object—in this case, a light pole.

Last year, the Lab grabbed headlines when it released video of its snake robot demonstrating its ability to climb up objects / people.

The group has since incorporated a series of accelerometers into each of the robot’s modules and implanted the necessary program to give it a near-instant ability of react-and-reflex; that is, when the bot hits a pole, branch, forearm, etc., it can detect having made contact and instantly grab hold.

The CMU site states that they chose the snake as the basis of form for their robot because of the reptile’s “many internal degrees of freedom to thread through tightly packed volumes accessing locations that people and machinery otherwise cannot use.”

The description adds: “The true power of these devices is that they are versatile, achieving behaviors not limited to crawling, climbing, and swimming.”

Learn more at biorobotics.ri.cmu.edu