Cockroach Robot Scurries and Moves Through Obstacles and Tight Spaces (VIDEO)

First Posted: Jun 23, 2015 10:47 AM EDT

This robot is sure to give you nightmares. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have created a cockroach-inspired robot that scurries across the ground and uses its body shape to maneuver through densely cluttered environments.

The U.S. Army actually funded the robot cockroach, which has a hard outer "shell" that conceals scurrying "legs" beneath. The shell itself allows the robot to fit neatly around obstacles without additional and expensive sensors.

The researchers didn't just create the robot, though. They spent hours using high-speed cameras to study the movement of discoid cockroaches as they maneuvered through an artificial obstacle course of vertical beams with small spacing. Each of the live cockroaches was fitted with a different artificial shell to see how its movement was impacted by body shape.

Then, the researchers designed and created the actual robot. With six legs, the robot can move through the obstacle course using similar roll maneuvers as the real cockroaches.

"We showed that our robot can traverse grass-like beam obstacles t high probability, without adding any sensory feedback or changes in motor control, thanks to the thin, rounded shell that allows the robot body to roll to reduce terrain resistance," said Chen Li, the lead author of the new study, in an interview with Control Engineering. "There may be other shapes besides the thin, rounded one that are good for other purposes, such as climbing up and over obstacles of other types. Our next steps will be to study a diversity of terrain and animal shapes to discover more terradynamic shapes, and even morphing shapes."

The findings are published in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics.

Want to see the robot for yourself? Check out the video below, courtesy of YouTube.

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