A Brooklyn company called Pliant Energy Systems has developed a prototype of an amphibious robot that can swim, skate, slither, and crawl through water and over all different kinds of terrain. The secret is an undulating propulsion system that can modified on the fly to adapt to different conditions.
Velox can use several modes of locomotion found in the animal kingdom using just one pair of “fins”. These fins are best described as four-dimensional objects with a hyperbolic geometry that allows the robot to swim like a ray, crawl like a millipede, jet like a squid, and slide like a snake.
A craft equipped with this system has unprecedented freedom to travel through a range of environments in a single mission. As an underwater vehicle, the robot’s ability to instantly reverse direction and do quick turns make it ideal for task such as coral reef inspection or dragon fish hunting where a craft must rapidly maneuver to look around and between objects.
(thx, dunstan)
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