Octoroach---image from the article quoted

As mentioned in an earlier blog (Quadrotors Can Now Play Catch, All-Robot Baseball Team Closer to Reality) I have a weakness for flying robots and having studied insects for a considerable time during my research years I find the objects mentioned here fascinating. The following are quotes from the article.

An Eight-legged Roach called “Octoroach”

“No matter how fancy and complicated we make robots, nature always has us beat. Is there anything more capable, more efficient, and more utterly indestructible than a cockroach? Of course not. Not yet, anyway. UC Berkeley‘s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab is trying to harness all the cleverness of birds and insects to create an entirely new generation of little robots with insect-like capabilities, and one of their most recent creations is called “Octoroach.”

Bipedal Ornithopter for Locomotion Transitioning (BOLT)

Bipedal Ornithopter for Locomotion Transitioning -- image from the article quoted

Its flying peer is “BOLT,” which stands for “Bipedal Ornithopter for Locomotion Transitioning.”

“It’s got a pair of little legs under its wings, and it can skitter around on the ground and over obstacles, saving energy by not having to fly unless it has to. Berkeley is also working on a second ornithopter called iBird, which is capable of flying towards a reflective target completely autonomously.”

Read the Article here: Robot Birds and Octoroaches On The Loose at UC Berkeley – IEEE Spectrum.

Use care when you use the fly-catcher the next time and count the legs before you step on that roach!

Related articles

• Robot Birds and Octoroaches On The Loose at UC Berkeley [Video] (gizmodo.com)
• Flying, flocking, and squirming robots at IROS (newscientist.com)
• Insectoid Androids – BOLT Flies, Crawls and Sounds Like a Regular Critter (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)
• Berkeley robot uses tiny, spiny toes to climb cloth (physorg.com)
• This Week In Bots: Animaltastic Innovation (fastcompany.com)
• Robot Swarm Could Steal Your Books (ponderingtechnology.wordpress.com)
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull the Robot (ponderingtechnology.wordpress.com)