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"Science fiction is the very literature of change. In fact, it is the only such literature we have."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Spider Tripod Robot | ||
| Three-legged alien robot. |
Explorers find unexpected company in the vast silence of Rama's interior.
| There was an intruder in the camp.
Laura Ernst noticed it first. She froze in sudden shock, then said: 'Don't move, Bill. Now look slowly to the right.' 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, and looked far too fragile to be dangerous, but that did not excuse their carelessness in letting it sneak up on them unawares. It reminded Norton of nothing so much as a three-legged spider, or daddy-long-legs, and he wondered how it had solved the problem - never challenged by any creature on Earth - of tripedal locomotion. |
| Technovelgy from Rendezvous With Rama,
by Arthur C. Clarke. Published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1972 Additional resources -
|
Here's a brief quote that illustrates its dervish-like motion:
This quote illustrates how it seemed to accomplish its movements:
It turns out that the 'spiders' are what the author calls 'biological robots' that were designed by the creators of Rama. Clarke coined the word "biot" to describe them. The spiders have 'considerable quantities of light metals.' The spiders have no mouth, no stomach, no gut, no lungs, no circulatory system. So, how does it move?
"Most of the spider is simply a battery, much like that found in electric eels and rays... It's the creature's source of energy."
SF fans will also, of course, remember the great tripods from H.G. Wells' 1898 classic War of the Worlds.
Compare to the metallic spider from The War of the Worlds (1898) by H.G. Wells,
the scarab robot from The Scarab (1936) by Raymond Z. Gallun,
the spider robot from The Mystery of Element 117 (1949) by Milton K. Smith,
the mechanical hound from Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury,
the metal insects from The Invincible (1954) by Stanislaw Lem,
the Sheem spider robot from The Witches of Karres (1966) by James Schmitz,
the spider cable device from The Web Between the Worlds (1979) by Charles Sheffield,
the spider robotic insects from Runaway (1985) by Michael Crichton and the recon spiders from Minority Report (Movie) (2002) by Steven Spielberg.
After regarding them passively for several minutes, the creature suddenly moved, and now they could understand why they had failed to observe its arrival. It was fast, and it covered the ground with such an extraordinary spinning motion that the human eye and mind had real difficulty in following it.
...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.
"Eighty percent of the body consist of a honeycomb of large cells... it's the one Raman structure that does exist on earth - though only in a handful of marine animals.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Rendezvous With Rama
More Ideas
and Technology by Arthur C. Clarke
Tech news articles related to Rendezvous With Rama
Tech news articles related to works by Arthur C. Clarke
Spider Tripod Robot-related
news articles:
- STriDER Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot
- Hexapod Emotional Spider Robot Sees Your Face
- JALURO Lunar Robot - 2-Wheeled Open Source
- Lunar Spider-Bot Swarm By Team Italia
- Rotopod Rotational Legged Locomotion Robot
- SLS Robot Spider 'Daddy Longlegs'
- Tabbot Robot Inspired By Spiders (And Clarke?)
- Super Ball Bot Tensegrity Robot For Solar System Exploration
- SpaceHopper Microgravity Robot Lands On Its Feet
| Artificial Skin For Robots Is Coming Right Along |
| Robot Guard Dog On Duty |
| Wearable Artificial Fabric Muscles |
| Dancing Robots Taught Dance Moves |
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
