Tag: Climbing

How about a game of chutes and ladders? Uh, I mean snakes and ladders. Look, snakes are nature’s creepiest creation and robots are man’s creepiest creation. So naturally, scientists had to combine them both for maximum terror.

Wall-climbing robots have been around for a while, but wall-climbing robots that can actually spin spiderwebs? Did I mention they were made of carbon fiber? Yeah, that exists now. We’re all going to wind up suspended from some cave ceiling in cocoons.

Jumping robots must really be in demand I guess. RHex uses six curved leg-scoops to propel the robot into some incredible jumps. This 15-pound machine can even hoist itself up a vertical wall that’s taller than itself.

A team of researchers in Switzerland have been working on a new robot that’s able to climb vertical surfaces of all sorts using unique sticky feet. The robot can climb all sorts of surfaces including walls, rock, aluminum, and others.

I’m sure that this is just a small taste of what we can expect from future robot competitions, just with less killing of humans. This competition is designed to attract more young students to the field of robotics and for today at least, it looks pretty fun.

Advancements in biotechnology continue to amaze me. We’re rapidly approaching the point where human/cyborg combinations are becoming more and more plausible, as is evidenced by this recent accomplishment by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. This past sunday, a man wearing the first “thought-controlled bionic leg” used the limb to help him ascend 103 floors of the skyscraper formerly known as the Sears Tower.

A team of Utah State University engineering students have built a wearable device that allows its user to climb walls. Their solution borrows less from Spider-Man and more from Inspector Gadget. Instead of subjecting themselves to radioactive spider bites, the Ascending Aggies built large suction pads.

We’ve seen some unusual robots around here over the years, but this is definitely one of my favorites in recent memory. This little guy is designed to be able to easily climb cloth surfaces.

Hot on the heels of the announcement of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, it’s looking more and more like Boston Dynamics will be a shoe-in for the competition with its latest bi-pedal robots. A recently released video clip shows DARPA and Boston Dynamics bipedal robots climbing stairs, walking on a treadmill and doing pushups.

Osaka-based company Muscle Corporation along with a few other Japanese companies have developed a humanoid robot that can climb up and down ladders. Tall buildings are no longer a safe haven for humans to hide in.

The gecko. Nature’s car insurance salesman, climber of walls, rocks and trees everywhere. Roboticists are finally getting a handle on how to mimic this creatures characteristics in robot form.

UC Berkeley has a history of creating insect-inspired robots for future humans to swat and kill and run from in horror. The latest is CLASH, a robot designed to speedily climb up vertical or near-vertical cloth surfaces.

We’re not really sure why anyone would go through the trouble of building humanoid wall-climbing robots like these ones. There are certainly faster ways to scale a wall. Maybe they made them just so bloggers like me would write about them?

This amazing bit of mechanical technology not only can run on the ground, it can ascend difficult to scale surfaces like trees and telephone poles. Designed by Boston Dynamics, working with researchers from The University of Pennsylvania’s Kod*lab, the RiSE V3 robot can work its way up poles without cracking so much as a sweat.