[Tyler]

DASH - Cardboard Cockroach Bot
     



  SF Gate has an article about DASH
the
10cm
(~4 inches) Cockroach Robot.
Yes, amazingly it even has it's own acronym:  DASH stands for Dynamic
Autonomous Sprawled Hexpod.  It also has plenty of
the usual fantastic buzz terms such as "helps
explain evolution" and "just like nature" that I find a little bit
of a stretch. At first glance the little hexapod looks like cardboard
toy that a 10
year old could make by hacking up a breakfast cereal box.
Actually made by engineers at UC Berkeley, it can survive a drop off a
four story
building and leap over objects twice it's height in a single scurrying
bound.
The robot is made out of
about $50 of materials which include thin cardboard, watch batteries and
electronic parts that could be picked up at Radio Shack.  The cardboard
is actually a sandwich of cardboard and polymer for strength and
flexibility and after being laser cut can be assembled fairly quickly
(especially if you speed up the video).  Once
you get a good look at the design it does seem rather well engineered.
For now it seems the little bot runs via RC control so it's not
technically an
autonomous robot yet.  Although this model doesn't seem to do much more
than falling off buildings and scurrying across the floor, from the
research they are doing, they
seem to have high hopes for the descendants of
these little cockroach robots.  Anything that can scare mom up onto the
table is pretty cool in my book!
   

http://robots.net/article/2963.html