Robot Roaches Work Together To Climb A Step
Climb away, creepy crawlies
Cooperation is an evolutionary advantage. While many creatures are perfectly comfortable spending most of their time alone, creatures that work together are capable of far more than their individual components working separately. It should come as no surprise, then, that when researchers make animal-inspired robots, they design them to work together, as a team.
Created by the University of California, Berkeley, the VelociRoACH is a small, fast, insect-imitating little machine.
Previously, we’ve seen the cardboard-bodied VelociRoACH’s launch robot birds and with shells slip through dense obstacles.
In the latest test, two of the roaches work together to climb a step that neither one could climb on its own.
The obstacle is 2.5 inches tall, more than half the robo-roaches 4-inch body length.
Yet working together, one roach can nudge the other onto the ledge, and then the first can assist the second robot up the ledge too. It’s a great day for robot cockroaches everywhere.
Watch them in action below:
