Support our non-partisan non-profit newsroom 💜 Donate now

The many uses of robot snakes

Molly Wood Mar 27, 2013
HTML EMBED:
COPY

The many uses of robot snakes

Molly Wood Mar 27, 2013
HTML EMBED:
COPY

What this country needs is a good robot snake, right?

A robot snake — just like the name suggests — is a long, segmented metal rig. When you toss it, it automatically wraps around whatever it hits. If the snake metaphor bugs you, think of it as a robot grappling hook that can also shimmy up poles. 

Howard Choset, a professor at the Robots Institute at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh which developed the snake, calls it “perching behavior.”

“We through the robot in the air, we have a smart way of processing the sensors, and then on impact we can then command the robot curl around whatever it just hit,” explains Choset.

Here’s just one of the many applications for a snake robot that likes to hug things. A firefighter doing search and rescue might throw one over a wall of flame. But Howie Choset’s team is thinking bigger.

“It is worth noting that the basic science behind that capability will apply to other mechanisms, not just flying snake robots,” says Choset. “We have some ideas on how to control helicopters, how to better control satellites — anything that has to orient and fly at the same time.”

These things are formally called “hyper-redundant mechanisms,” a class that also includes not just snakes but elephant nose robots and monkey tail robots. Click on the audio player above to hear more about robotic snake applications.

See the robot snake in action in the video below:

 

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.