Carnegie Mellon University & Biorobotics

Carnegie Mellon University's biorobotics lab has been working on a project involving snake-like locomotion in a robot.  I'm linking a video of it rolling itself up the base of a small tree below.  As you can see, it's demo is still tethered for power which is one issue that will take some work to resolve.  Could be an interesting strategy for movement through difficult terrain in military applications, and definitely for surveying and searching for survivors in wreckage caused by natural disasters.  Having robots like this (search robots are already being used for natural disaster survivor searches) raising questions on what is and isn't possible currently is what will drive the industry forward.  CMU is awesome, if I can't afford RPI this fall I'm definitely applying there to finish my undergrad, heh.  Anyway, enjoy the video and let me know what you think.

Boston Dynamics and Big Dog

In case you don't know about "Big Dog", several years ago the company Boston Dynamics, with funding from DARPA, developed a quadruped robot to transport loads for U.S. military troops.  The videos released from testing were very impressive, with adaptive balancing in real-time and the ability to move over complex terrain very well.  I'm interested in their LS3 robot they're developing for the marines.  It could be very cool how they'll adapt and improve on what they've already created and proven to be worthwhile engineering in the released test videos.  Here's a video of "Big Dog" in case you have no idea what I'm talking about.  Go robots!