This Week In Bots: Some Pop, Some Lock, Some Move Robotic

Robot Snake

Tintanoboa was a real snake, a prehistoric serpent of biblical proportions--it was over 50 feet long and some of them could weigh over a ton. Thankfully he's long extinct, but to demonstrate the scale and scariness of the beast, artist group eatArt from Vancouver are building a robot version.

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Yes, it really is that big--and eventually destined to have a saddle for a brave rider. Now, I'm stumped as to what's scarier: That a 50-foot snake once existed, or it only costs about $10,000 for amateur roboticists to put together a huge hydraulic robotic replica. Nobody show this to DARPA.

Robot Ostrich

MIT and DARPA are collaborating on buiding a robotic ostrich. Before you laugh too hard, imagining this bot sticking its metal head in the sand in scary conflict situations, remember one odd fact about the real flesh and blood ostrich: At top speed it can sprint across uneven ground at 60 miles an hour--freeway speed. It's the fastest land bird. So a robotic runner could have numerous applications in military situations, accessing tricky locations where flying drones couldn't reach with a load of ammunition or medical gear (much more swiflty than BigDog).

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FastRunner will have a top speed of over 20 miles an hour, and it's packed with innovations--including a very novel leg structure that needs fewer actuators than you may think.

Robot Sailors

Liquid Robotics' Wave Glider sailing robots have been around for a while, including helping efforts to track the 2010 Gulf oil spill. But this week four of the diminutive auto-sailors have set off on what's hoped will be a Guinness World Record-breaking journey: From San Francisco across the Pacific to Australia and Japan without fuel, which may be the longest journey by a robot across the face of our planet.

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It's no empty act, though, as the Wave Gliders are tricked out with sensors that should deliver some unique data to oceanographers and climate scientists the world o...

[Source: Fast Company]