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Roboboa Dancing Robot Snake
Roboboa is described as a dancing robot snake from our friends at WowWee. It really does dance around, moving most of it's jointed body to and fro. It does not appear to offer any sort of real, directed motion, however.
(WowWee roboboa)
In a nutshell, Roboboa will play lights and music and dance along, it will wake you up with its alarm clock, it can track motion, appears to accept an iPod and will obey your commands with a programmable remote control.
Science fiction readers will of course remember Roger Zelazny's cool mechanical cobra from his 1967 novel Lord of Light:
like a mechanical cobra capable of registering encephalogram readings from a mile away, when it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd, regardless of the body he wears... (Read more about the mechanical cobra )
Take a walk down memory lane, and view the history of robotic snakes:
- R7[1] - early robotic snake
- Ames Generation 2 robot snake on Mars
- 'Serpentine spy' uses shape-memory alloy to wriggle
- Polybot-Based Snake robot - studying serpentine locomotion
- OmniTread - its treads are better than wheels
You might also enjoy looking at a Roboboa quicktime video.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 1/14/2007)
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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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