The incredibly creepy swimming snake-like robot terminators from the new Terminator Salvation movie are pretty scary looking.
(Swimming snake robots from Terminator Salvation)
It's a good thing that these terrifying, undulating autonomous snake-like swimming robots are just CGI effects.
Actually, they already exist, in prototype form at least.
The ACM-R5 robot can slither both on land and in water.
Shigeo Hirose, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has been working on what he refers to as "serpent robots" and serpentine locomotion since the 1970s.
The ACM-R5 robot that came out of Hirose's lab first debuted at the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, Japan with improved versions shown publicly in 2007. An incredibly life-like snake robot, it is shown in the video below, gliding through water in a test pool.
Drosophila Robotica, The Mechanical Fly
'... the Scarab [flying robot] buzzed into the great workroom as any intruding insect might...'- Raymond Z. Gallun, 1936.
Robo-Raven Flapping Wing Robot Bird
'When he had first built them, they had been crude indeed, flying mechanisms with little more than a reflex-response unit.'- Philip E. High, 1968.
Bartendro Robot Bartender
'He sipped the cognac that the robot bartender handed him...'- Alfred Bester, 1956.
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.
Sky City's 220 Stories Are Go
'It rested among green parklands and... stood in total isolation, a glittering block of whites and flashing windows dotted with colors.'
Robo-Raven Flapping Wing Robot Bird
'When he had first built them, they had been crude indeed, flying mechanisms with little more than a reflex-response unit.'