Roaches Today, Robots Tomorrow
from the creepy,-crawly,-and-metallic dept
Roland Piquepaille writes "The San Francisco Chronicle carries an interesting story about how a Stanford team is modeling robots to mimic cockroaches' speed and agility. Many current robots, like the Mars Sojourner, have wheels, while insects have legs. Still, why a robotic cockroach? Because they're fast and tough. "Some cockroaches can move 50 times their body length in one second. On a human scale, that's about 200 mph, which explains why cockroaches vanish as soon as the kitchen light is turned on." The article adds that the cockroach is "the decathlete of the insect world." It also explains why the researchers chose to build robots with six legs and gives some more details about the current performance of these 4 inches long robots. Check my blog for a summary or read the original article for more details."
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