The folks over at takram design engineering decided to build a six-legged insectoid robot. The robot, named Phasma, was built for the purpose of running around like an insect.
The robot is battery-powered and remote-controlled, and looks really cool. The design was inspired by iSprawl, a robot developed by Stanford University. takram replaced a lot of the material with stainless steel and rubber joins to make the robot look a lot more attractive.
The robot moves using its six legs, three at a time, forming tripod gaits, to keep it stable so that it can move quickly on a flat surface. I’m not exactly sure how it would fare on a surface that isn’t flat, but having been designed to mimic an insect’s movement, it wouldn’t be surprising to see it move on any surface shy of walking up walls.
In the same way, I’m also not surprised to see people concerned about its moving across different surfaces, yet those are drastic changes in surface that would generally require sensors for each leg, and a more automated design. I guess that will take time to do. In any case, check out the video shot by DigInfoNews last week in Tokyo.
As seen in the video, the robot is on display in Tokyo, and people seem to enjoy playing around with it.
You can check out Phasma if you happen to be in the Tokyo area. The robot will be on display at the Bio-Mimicry in Robots Exhibit at the Science Museum until the 22nd of August.
You can also read about the new military and police robot as well as the robotic wheelchair which follows people around. For more insect-inspired robots, you can check out this adorable looking Swashbot or the DIY Spiderbot (sure it’s an arachnid, but it still looks cool).
Via Crunchgear
