Berkeley News April 24, 2019
A team of researchers in the US (UC Berkeley, industry, NASA) started designing these “tensegrity” robots — which combine the forces of tension and compression to create stable structures in hopes of creating a robot that could safely fall from space to explore Saturn’s moon, Titan. The new soccer-ball-shaped robots, created by engineers at UC Berkeley and Squishy Robotics, have the remarkable ability to fall from a height of more than 600 feet and be no worse for wear. Built of a network of rods linked by contracting cables, they can also shapeshift in order to crawl from one point to another. The rapidly deployable mobile sensor robots are designed to save lives, reduce costs and risks and increase effectiveness of emergency response. The team is currently collaborating with the Los Angeles County and the Houston fire departments to beta test the robots in disaster scenarios…read more.
Squishy robots, which can land safely from a 600-foot drop, may help first responders scope out disaster zones without putting human lives at risk. (Image courtesy Squishy Robotics)