Posted 09.09.2011 at 3:14 pm
20 Comments
Base-Jumping Bot
Having climbed up the building along a red carpet, Paraswift base jumps to the ground, where ETH Zurich engineers waited with a safety net.
via YouTube
A new base-jumping robot can climb vertical walls, flip open a parachute and jump off, parasailing to the ground while capturing video of the trip. It’s the first compact robot that can both climb and fly, two characteristics that will serve it well when the robots take over the world and need to penetrate humanity’s defenses.
Paraswift, as it’s called, rolls up the main building at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in the video below. It doesn’t need the red carpet, but its builders at ETH Zurich get style points for that touch.
Unlike other wall-climbing tech based on vacuum suction, the robot uses a low pressure gradient to stick to the wall. Paraswift uses an impeller, a rotor spinning in a tube, to create a low pressure vortex like the center of a tornado. This creates a partial vacuum that adheres the robot to the wall, as explained by ETH Zurich. The wheels stay in contact with the surface to be climbed, and the vortex holds the robot to the wall, so there’s no need to create a vacuum seal.
It was built for fun in a collaboration with Disney Research, which has been exploring new robot designs for use in its theme parks. But it could conceivably be used to capture aerial footage or test new robot landing systems.
As the video shows, Paraswift unfurls its parachute before it jumps off, which ensures it has time to position properly for a safe landing. In that sense, it’s not a true base jumper. But impressive nonetheless.
[via Tech Crunch]
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wow, what an article to follow up the last one!
@ drchuck1 - Exactly! lol
PFHAHAHAHAH...thats not a robot..thats a RC toy..It doesnt climb..it drives up.
plus it doesnt jump off..the video clearly shows it just stops the vaccuume and FALLS down...
still laughing
also the lamest wall climbing, base jumping robot ever constructed.
Christ, what a bunch of Negative Nancies!
i liked it, like all things it will be improved
@CeilingFan124...that comment comming from a ceiling fan, lol...correct, as it is the only one! (that is what you were getting at? you sly one)
Wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, but the music sure did get me pumped up. lol I did like the parachute deployment.
THERE WAS NO HURLING OR JUMPING!!!!!!
rage
So it doesn't use a vacuum to climb, it just uses a partial vacuum to climb? Am I the only one who thinks that doesn't make sense?
By the way, it would, in fact, need that carpet to climb that wall. The spaces between bricks would destroy the partial vacuum and the robot would drop like an anvil as soon as it reached one of the gaps.
-IMP
I kind of thought from the article that it actually went up more than 25ft or so. Would it not climb any higher or was this just a first demo? The video was a little of a let down. And then not such a graceful drop.
Still nice anyway.
Curse you, red carpet!
I hope these weren't engineering majors. Cool robot, but here's what my reaction was:
took 10 people to make this? You guys gotta get out from under your profs and do some real projects.
Perfect if you need to infiltrate award shows. Im probably the hundredth person to say "it took that many people to build THAT?". Not impressive.
Interesting material. I would love to know more about this topic.
Syed Sohaib, Admin and author at:
www.what-technology.com
so it needs a quarter pipe to make it onto the wall, the wall needs to be covered in a carpet to get a seal from the vacuum it uses to suck itself onto the wall... the carpet needs to be hung by a team of people prior to using it.
looks like something from the toy maker "airhogs" .. just not as good.
cheers, eh
I like the build up and drama of the music and people. Then the robot climbs up the wall and well unleashes its wings and kind of lamely falls. It was equal to opening a cookie jar. lol I like it. It was funny. The build up was a good contrast to the end. Now to be fair, I couldn't build something like that. So to the engineers, WELL DONE!
That toy is kinda cute! ;)