New Robots Developed To Climb Walls

An anonymous reader writes "SRI International, a nonprofit research and development organization, has developed a new technology that enables some robots to scale walls. The wall-climbing robots could be a boon for the US military, which could use them on reconnaissance or other missions in war zones, said Philip von Guggenberg, director of business development for SRI International, adding that the independent group has received some funding from DARPA, the technology research arm of the Pentagon. Von Guggenberg said that the new electrical adhesive technology called compliant electroadhesion, provides an electrically controllable way to stick machines to a wall. So what can they do? That adhesion lets the robots, using either feet or tracks, scale a vertical wall. They can even climb walls covered in dust and debris, or made out of concrete, wood, steel, glass, drywall, and brick. Good news is that regular robots, especially those with tracks, can be retrofitted with the technology and turned into wall climbers. Maybe if the kids are good, they'll get one for Christmas."

Comments

Easy defense against these robots

[imrtt]

The article mentions that electroadhesion doesn't work well on damp surfaces. All you need to defend against these robots is a bucket of water.

What ... ?

[the bluebrain]

... now we'll have robots lording over us from random vertical surfaces?
I, for one, am not sure I welcome the idea.

Lem leads again and the robot free climbs

[dbIII]

Odd coincidence. Just a week again I read "The Accident" by Stanislaw Lem which is about trying to track down a robot that has gone missing and has unexpectedly done a bit of rock climbing in it's spare time.

eisnhower begs to differ

[Anonymous Coward]

the 1 trillion spent on the iraq war, if spent on civilian projects, would have generated far, far, far more advances, contributed far more to industry, and benefited society much more.

yeaah the military generated a lot of cool stuff, but that is because the military uses up so much money that other science projects get starved, including nasa, the department of energy, the national institutes of health, the cdc, fermilab, etc etc etc.

giving a certain amount of money to the militray does not necessarily generate discovery or advancement faster than giving that money to civilian projects.