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Scandinavian Scientists Designing Robotic Snakes
Cowards Anonymous writes "The Sintef Group, a research company based in Trondheim, Norway, announced that it's designing a robot based on snakes. The 1.5-meter long robots, which are made of aluminum, are being designed to inspect and clean complicated industrial pipe systems that are typically narrow and inaccessible to humans. The intelligent robots have multiple joints to enable them to twist vertically and climb up through pipe systems to locate leaks in water systems, inspect oil and gas pipelines and clean ventilation systems."
More than you ever wanted to know about devices that inspect/clean, etc. the internals of pipes. These snakes sound like a logical next step. Boring to you, fascinating to me.
The summery looks awfully similar to things CMU has already done - see hack a day
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