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Tabbot Robot Inspired By Spiders (And Clarke?)
The Tabbot is a cartwheeling three-legged robot developed by Professor Rechenberg, who was inspired by the flic-flac spider, which displays an amazing form of locomotion. See the video.
(Flic-Flac inspired robot Tabbot video)
The Tabbot gets its name from Tabacha, the Berber word for spider.
Fans of Arthur C. Clarke may recall the very similar spider tripod robots from his wonderful 1972 novel Rendezvous with Rama:
Norton turned his head. Ten metres away was a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no larger than a football. Set around the body were three large, expressionless eyes, apparently giving 360 degrees of vision, and trailing beneath it were three whiplike tendrils. The creature was not quite as tall as a man......each leg in turn acted as a pivot around which the creature whirled its body... it also seemed to him that every few 'steps' it reversed its direction of spin, while the three whips flickered over the ground like lightning as it moved...
(Read more quotes about the spider tripod robots)
In the novel, the spider robots are biots, biological robots rather than mechanical creations.
From WeatherNetwork and Senckenberg.
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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