A Robotic Caterpillar Slowly Climbs a Woodpile

This is almost beyond meditative: watch Reuben Margolin’s robotic caterpillar very slowly scale a woodpile.

The woodpile is not as random as it looks, but follows a predetermined polynomial spline within certain bounds of curvature. It is made of scrap wood and took about week to make. The caterpillar took several months, although a lot of that time was spent learning about servo motors, micro-controllers, Terminal and Python, and learning how to use an oscilloscope to trouble shoot the square wave signal that carries the angular information.

(via clive thompson)

Tags: meditative Reuben Margolin robots video

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