Video: Robohopper gets wings, Icarus complex

Remember the tiny 5cm robot grasshopper that could leap like a superhero but had trouble landing its, um, landings? Well, it still hasn’t figured out those basics, but its Swiss developers are already marching ahead with plans to endow it with a pair of wings and light awareness. Now described as a self-deploying microglider, the wannabe locust will be able to identify light sources and fly toward them, an act known as phototaxis, which will make it about as intelligent as your garden variety moth. All the same, you can’t stick a camera on a moth and use it to search disaster areas for survivors … or can you? Videos of the underlying tech can be found after the break.

[Via Bot Junkie]

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Video: Robohopper gets wings, Icarus complex originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This post is tagged: artificial muscles, ArtificialMuscles, bot, Ecole Polytechnique, EcolePolytechnique, flight, flying robot, FlyingRobot, jumping robot, JumpingRobot, microglider, miniature robotics, MiniatureRobotics, phototaxis, robot, robot grasshopper, RobotGrasshopper, Robots, self deploying microglider, SelfDeployingMicroglider, shape memory alloy, ShapeMemoryAlloy, video, Wings