Space-bound robots tend look like tanks and are about as flexible as the Tin Man after a rainstorm. Don’t get me wrong, the robots NASA sends to, say, Mars are very very smart. But their forms present some limitations; namely, snail-paced research, lumbering motions and proneness to injury.
Just imagine then, if there was a robot that had the brains of Curiosity but the nimbleness of a tumbleweed. That’s exactly what a group of scientists at NASA are looking to create with the Super Ball Bot, a tangle of rods and motors that could revolutionize the way robots work in space and here on Earth.
The Super Ball Bot, currently deep in the research phase in NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program, looks nothing like its robotic predecessors.
via Wired
Image: NASA
