Robots With Square Wheels?

Roland Piquepaille writes "About eighteen months ago, I told you about a tricycle with square wheels which needed a specially designed road. But now, Distributed Robotics, a company from Troy, N.Y., is developing robots with square wheels which don't need specific roads. These new 'cars' propel themselves on flat surfaces by taking advantage of gravity. This might sound crazy, but the inventors think it could lead to new robots and toys, and more generally to new micro-machines or MEMS applications."

Comments

Re:Why?

[Grimster]

Because it's a new way to do an old task. Is it practical? I don't know, how many "impractical" or "silly" things later were found to be extremely useful?

Looking at the article I was just struck with a sense of "whoa neat" at the simplicity of the idea yet the fact (as far as I know) it's never been done before (using a "helicopter" of shifting weight to propel a car forward by it's properly aligned square wheels). Sometimes it's not so much "why?" but "why hasn't anyone ever thought of this before?".

Re:ROTATING TURRET OF DOOM!

[kinnell]

Why are folks so obsessed with literally reinventing the wheel?

Because when you're making machines at microscopic scales, you get a whole new set of problems. Lubricating bearings is difficult, because conventional lubricants are too viscous. Assembling complex devices is difficult, because you need complex devices to do it. And reliably creating smooth round surfaces is difficult because irregularities in the material cause rough surfaces. Flat surfaces are easy to make - just shear a crystaline material.