Carnegie Mellon robot jumps up, jumps up and glides down (video)

We will handle the imaginary terror of UFOs and nightmarish, flying mammals. But, robots that could jump like a human after which glide like a colugo? Now you’re just filling Mr. Spielberg with much more sci-fi, end of days fodder . Carnegie Mellon researchers Matthew Woodward and Metin Sitti have crafted a prototype jumping and gliding bot on the university’s NanoRobotics Lab that springs into action using a couple of human knee-like joints. The automatic hi-jinks don’t end there either, because the duo’s invention then spreads its legs to catch some air and glide on back to terra firma. The project is not just some little bit of engineering whimsy; the team plans to evolve this tech to be used in “unstructured terrain” — i.e. non-level, wargadget territory. For now, this lord of the leaping gliders can reach comfortable human-sized heights of as much as six feet. Give it a while, however, and we’re sure this lil’ android’ll give Superman a bound for his money. Click past the break for a true world demo.

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This post is tagged: carnegie mellon researchers, end of days, metin sitti, mr spielberg, nanorobotics, unstructured terrain, world demo