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OmniTread: A serpentine robot

Posted by samzenpus on from the crawl-anywhere dept.

karvind writes "Physorg is running a story about OmniTread: a serpentine robot designed to traverse extremely difficult terrain, such as the rubble of a collapsed building. The 26-pound robot is developed at the University of Michigan U-M College of Engineering. It moves by rolling, log-style, or by lifting its head or tail, inchworm-like, and muscling itself forward. Link to videos. Check out there other robots as well."

5 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. It's so simple. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Their other robots are there. They're amazing.

  2. ed2k link of the movie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative


    remember to remove the spaces

    ed2k://|file|OmniTread.SwRI-7min.320x240 x30.wmv|39219440|00C932FF9AD4D798E92C05D9869EE323| /

  3. More like a caterpillar by SnowZero · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is more like a caterpillar than a snake. It uses tracks all over its body (like many small feet), rather than a serpentine motion to propel itself. Props though, as this seems far more practical than robots that actually try to move like snakes or inchworms.

    I've sat through many talks about modular robots that are supposed to be able to do everything, yet rarely do anything well at all (I come from a lab doing what I guess you'd call "specialized monolithic" robots). I think this robot is just specialized enough to be useful (using its treads). The walking snake like robots are normally agonizingly slow, but this robot moves at a reasonable speed for the type of applications you'd need it for. Also, tracks should scale up in speed reasonably well if needed.

  4. Re:I wonder by Nebu · · Score: 2, Informative

    How modular the design is. It is obviously made of 5 (reasonably) identical parts, but I wonder if you can (in theory) make a robot of this type as longs as you want just by `tacking' on a new section

    If you go into the slideshow on the site, there's an image of the robot composed of 7 sections instead of 5.

  5. Cool, but... by AliasMoze · · Score: 2, Informative

    it's hard not to be a little disappointed with the state of robot technology. We've landed a man on the moon, split the atom, and decoded our genes, yet we're supposed to be impressed by a (human-controlled) robot that can crawl like a caterpillar.

    Don't get me wrong. I realize this is a step forward, but the current state of robots seems so behind others.