Tree Climbing Robot

galactic grub writes "New Scientist's new Tech Blog has an article about a remarkable, if slightly creepy, tree-climbing robot being developed by robotics experts from Carnegie Mellon and several other US Universities. The article comes complete with a video clip of it going up several different surfaces."

Great...

...now where am I gonna hide when the robots attack...

Re:Great...

...now where am I gonna hide when the robots attack...

In a cavernous underground layer of course! Don't you watch movies?

You don't really have to worry anyways, they dont want to hurt you they just want to use you as a power source.

Re:Great...

Hi Shania!

I must admit that I've always thought that you were really cute and that I would love to meet you, but I find I'm somewhat put off by your lack of knowledge about our language, and unfortunately, what it says about your level of education. I realize that you kept hearing a word in the movies and it sure sounded like 'layer', but you were actually hearing a completely different word; 'lair'. Wacky huh?

Re:Great...

I've known a few guys who thought they were pretty smart
But you've got being right down to an art
You think you're a genius--you drive me up the wall
You're a regular original, a know-it-all

Okay, so you're a grammer nazi who understands homophones
That don't impress me much [cowboylyrics.com]

-- Shania

Re:Great...

How ironic!

I must admit that I've always thought that you were really cute and that I would love to meet you

Of course what you really want to do is meat her.

(I was really torn between that and suggesting that, like the original poster, you wanted to layer...)

So, what happens when it gets stuck?

Do I have to call the firemen or tech support?

ObHHGG...

Great, robots have beaten humans to the realisation that it was a bad idea to come down out of the trees in the first place.

Creeping Tom

Obviously such a robots could have plenty of useful applications, in search-and-rescue and space exploration, for example. But presumably it could also help you reach those really hard-to-prune branches.

Or put a moveable camera on its head, make it climb your neighbor's house, and you will have the perfect 'Creeping Tom.'

Kill them now...

while you still can.

Awesome!

This is a wonderful robot, I think we should have them everywhere just for the heck of it - climbing towers, trees, buildings, bridges, just running around everywhere. Man, that is a GREAT IDEA. We need more climbing robots.

This is just what we need

...for when NASA launches a probe to Endor.

Follow up

Any kid knows that getting up is easy, but getting down is much harder. How have they faired on that?

Re:Follow up

Gettind down is easy. It's putting it back together that is the hard part.

Re:Follow up

Any kid knows that getting up is easy, but getting down is much harder. How have they faired on that?

Well the fineprint does say to call a doctor if it stays up for more than 4 hours.

From the makers of BigDog

This is another robot built by the guys at Boston Dynamics http://www.bostondynamics.com/ [bostondynamics.com]. The robotic pack mule that they built ( BigDog ) was linked to last Friday. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/ 04/0240246 [slashdot.org]

There's also Rhex a six legged waterproof go anywhere robot.
more info at http://www.bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?sect ion=robotics [bostondynamics.com]

REAL robots don't climb trees...

they cut them down instead.

Alternate Video Link

Courtesy of Boston Dynamics who co-developed the robot with CMU: 6.4MB WMV [bostondynamics.com]

damn hippies

Great, just what we need, another tree-huggin hippie robot.

Is your time worth $2700 a minute?

It would be nice if submitters would warn people when Flash is required so those of us who don't bother with that nonsense wouldn't waste our time.

I opened up the article, and read the brief blurb -- about 45 seconds.

I clicked on the YouTube link in the article, and saw the little Flashblock icon. I closed the window. Time -- about 5 seconds.

Are you really that upset that you lost less than a minute? Your stress level must be through the roof if you're so busy that you can't lose a minute, less than 5 seconds of which are actually spent identifying the Flash video.

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

Why exactly do you say that?

Sure Japanese have developed some impressive robots, but I wouldn't call something like the ballroom dancing robot a great feat of technology. Japanese designers seem to go for flashy robots, putting immense effort in creating something that has little practical utility but creates quite a stir. One company developed a humanoid robot and then we see dozens of companies cloning the original concept.

The ones developed in the US and Europe tend to be developed for real world applications. They don't look pretty, but they get the job done, solving a specific challenge in the process.

Not to discredit what the Japanese are doing, as they certainly are innovating too, but there's no reason to put down this work just because it doesn't look like Honda's ASIMO.

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

So, the AI lessons in making a robot react CORRECTLY to a ping-pong ball have absolutely no relationship to things like #3? They're solving 'problems' while gaining massive leaps in understanding. Even if their end result isn't immediately useful, the lessons they learn from it are.

Re:Still can't beat the japanese

5. Find Sarah Connor.

Re:Tree climbing robot for space exploration!

Climbing a vertical surface shares similarities with clinging to an astroid with very little gravity, both can be bad when you let go.

Re:how?

if you push in each direction into a small grove, such as the space between bricks, or the ridges in bark, you are able to have enough friction to keep you up, I rock climb quite often and simply by pushing with both hand and feet against rocks, you can even climb the roof of a cave.

Re:it's an iguana

Well, it's obviously a six legged iguana. Except it's boxy. And has no head. And only a stump instead of a tail. And it doesn't really move like an iguana.

But apart from that it's quite hard to tell it apart from an iguana. It's quite obvious where they got their inspiration from.

Anyone saying otherwise has to be an iguana hating fanatic.