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X2-VelociRoACH Cooperates To Launch Tiny Drones

Ah, VelociRoACH! Is there anything you can't do? Cooperate with H2Bird drone for launch? Done!


(VelociRoACH does it again)

The Berkeley Biomimetic Lab is building some pretty crazy little bots. They've got the X2-VelociRoACH, which can scurry along most terrains at speeds up to 16 feet per second. They've also got the H2Bird, which flies like a bird into the air. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before someone got the brilliant idea to combine the two into an amazing Megazord robot.

First, the researchers put the H2Bird on the back of the VelociRoACH, then had the roach get a running start. The bird can then fly off from the platform the roach provides. What it creates, in effect, is a two step-robotic explorer able to tackle the ground and the air.

The multiple robot team in Isaac Asimov's 1944 story Catch That Rabbit were also able to synchronize their movements, taking their lead from the leader robot, Dave:

There was a marching formation now, and in their own dim body light, the rough-hewn walls of the mine tunnel swam past noiselessly, checkered with misty erratic blobs of shadow. They marched in unison, seven of them, with Dave at the head. They wheeled and turned in macabre simultaneity; and melted through changes of formation with the weird ease of chorus dancers in Lunar Bowl...

The robot mice from Ray Bradbury's 1950 Martian Chronicles stories were cooperative robots, as were the mechanical mice from a 1941 short story by Eric Frank Russell.

Via Popular Mechanics.

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