See this little guy smirking at you? Want to know how he got up there? A word of advice: as of right now, do not stand anywhere near a snake robot while looking like a tree, because these things will now fly right at you and go for your throat.
As far as the robot is concerned, I imagine that your neck probably makes for a perfectly acceptable vantage point from which to survey an area, at least until you pass out and fall over. We've already seen these robots climb up people, but the new trick that they've learned now is to reflexively grab on to stuff after being thrown at it:
Using the accelerometers inside each module of the snake robot we are able to detect when the robot hits a pole or branch after being thrown and have the robot automatically perch on contact.
Pole or branch or your neck, of course.
This work was supported by the Army Research Lab, which can only mean one thing: snake robots are being weaponized. No doubt there have been super secret tests with catapults full of snakebots being hurled at neck level at hordes of hapless grad students. Obviously there is only one prudent course of action: make reinforced spiked collars mandatory for all citizens. You know, just in case these flying snake robots go rogue.
Incidentally, robotic snakes totally stole the fly n' grab trick from real snakes, some of whom launch themselves from trees and glide to other trees, grabbing on with their bodies on impact. You can see video of that here.
[ CMU Biorobotics ]
Evan Ackerman is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. Since 2007, he has written over 6,000 articles on robotics and technology. He has a degree in Martian geology and is excellent at playing bagpipes.
