Snakebot inspires dreams, haunts nightmares

Built by robotics students at Carnegie Mellon, Uncle Sam the Snakebot is simultaneously horribly awesome, and awesomely creepy.

Uncle Sam is programmed with a variety of different "gaits", or types of movement patterns, which are based on the real-life behavior of real-life snakes. The goal is to create a modular—and, thus, relatively simple to produce and scale—robot that can get to and through places where people, and less-willies-inducing robots, can't maneuver.

Via Switched

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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aschwa5

AGGGGHHHHHH! Do these engineers not remember the calculated precision put into the descriptions of the killer robo-dog in “Fahrenheit 451?” Sure, they’re slow and clunky, now. So were Ataris. Damnation.
jonandrewdavis

I became suspicious when considering the editing decisions – atï»¿ no point do we see the snake actually performing the climb in full frame. We see before, in progress (incomplete shot), and after. The opportunity for human assistance is there, but my doubts were assuaged by watching other videos – it does perform well (on plastic at least.) Edit your videos better so we can see the entire action, I’d be interested in it for sure. Sorry for being that crazy youtube commenter I never wanted to be.

thought I’d drop my youtube comment here, as boing boing readers are skeptics, right?

Least you can get from this is a lesson on the power of editing, hehe. [or proof that people are parnoid]
- Anonymous
  
  That’s because the power cord keeps getting in the way and ruining the illusion. You can see it get tangled at the start of the tree climb.
Anonymous

Snake? Snake! Snaaaaaaaaaake!!!!!!!!
Anonymous

Watch it learn!
EffingTanj

But can it clear the clog in my toilet?
WalterBillington

My poor children.
Promethean Sky

This can only lead to untold horrors. I see ‘Snakes on a Plane: Rise of the Machines’ in the future.
Anonymous

Only problem here is the out of sight umbilical cord which supplys power & takes back data to computer that controls it.ofcourse there is the probably car(auto) battery for power… apart from that its a good idea with a long way to go.
Evil Paul

“The goal is to create a modularâ€”and, thus, relatively simple to produce and scaleâ€”robot that can get to and through places where people, and less-willies-inducing robots, can’t maneuver.”

Sooooooo, what you’re saying is, they’re trying to create a BETTER METAL SNAKE??? \m/(*~*)\m/

http://youtubedoubler.com/KLLu
Anonymous

omg evil paul, you win this thread.

can you even do that on boing boing?

to remain relevant to the topic.. i really enjoyed how the snakebot climbed the tree, but is that how real snaks really do it?

in my mind that was just some creative programming on the designers part
certron

Just great… now there’s robots in trees.
Antinous / Moderator

It’s about time that the ladies get to experience the same Freudian terror that we gentlemen get from spider robots.
- Sekino
  
  If only that robot snake tracked and killed spiders, THAT would be SWEET.
  
  Using lasers, of course.
Weber Ihor

It looks cool!
Chris Arkenberg

A former co-worker of mine, Dr. Gavin Miller, has been researching natural systems simulation for decades. As a side hobby he designed and built some amazing snake robots that very effectively convey the natural motions of teh real thing/

There’s a video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJuNe50uuzk

And this is his site:
http://www.snakerobots.com/index.html
seyo

No Ma’am; I don’t like it.
dross1260

Trust in Me (The Python’s Song)
ackpht

And lasers! Snake robots with lasers!
anansi133

Something like that would have a much easier time with the sand pits and boulders on Mars. Just gotta figure out how to mount a solar panel. Maybe a soft one that unrolls?

…but it wouldn’t be as much fun to anthropomorphize. (One reason why we shouldn’t be doing that shit! They’ll avoid the best performing design in favor of the best looking design.)
Anonymous

We all think theyre going to be benefitial…until they become self-aware O_O
Shroomy

The problem is that it requires a lot of power. It probably couldn’t carry its own power source for very long.
RobDubya

Mark my words, it’s sh*t like this that will lead to the Robot Uprising.

One more engineer building a big spiky death machine because he (or she, but let’s be serious here, he) “thought it would be cool” is one more step closer to those machines becoming self-aware, getting together and then it’s all screaming and running and shotguns as they try to strip the still-living flesh from our bones to power their bio-reactor power sources.
BookGuy

I was O.K. with it until it was up on the tree looking around. Then I wanted to get out my robo-hoe and chop its robo-head off.
alllie

More money and genius spent just so they can spy on us.
Anonymous

Wow!

I wish I could do that with my snake!
millrick

kill it!! kill it with fire!
Anonymous

Wha…why is the camera necessary?
Anonymous

so cool to have stumbled upon this, because i work in the snake lab here at CMU. these things are so much fun to work with.
Johnny Justice

I think it’s kind of cute.
Itsumishi

Uh… suddenly the future just scares me.
Anonymous

I would be interested to see how real snakes react to these snake robot terminators