Swinging Robot Excels At Wall-Climbing

Zothecula writes "Engineers have used a variety of techniques to create robots that can scale walls — the Climber uses a rolling seal, while the insect-like robots from SRI have caterpillar tracks with electro-adhesive properties. While such robots generally focus on speed, adhering to the wall and deciding how and when to move, the creators of a small robot named ROCR say it is the first wall-climbing robot to focus on climbing efficiently. And it does so by using the momentum of a tail that swings like a grandfather clock's pendulum."

Gibbons

[Olli_Niemitalo]

Gibbon monkeys are probably the fastest climbers, and they keep their momentum by swinging their bodies around their wrists that have ball and socket joints. This robot uses a similar principle.

Re:Gibbons

[Anonymous Coward]

I was curious to see them, so I searched for Gibbons climbing and ended up watching about an hour of National Geographic videos on various monkeys, starting with Gibbons [nationalgeographic.com] (video continues to other monkeys).