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"The wealth of the universe is all over your head. We need to take command of the solar system to gain that wealth..."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Spider Tripod Robot | ||
| Three-legged alien robot. |
Explorers find unexpected company in the vast silence of Rama's interior.
| There was an intruder in the camp.
Laura Ernst noticed it first. She froze in sudden shock, then said: 'Don't move, Bill. Now look slowly to the right.' Norton turned his head. Ten metres away was a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no larger than a football. Set around the body were three large, expressionless eyes, apparently giving 360 degrees of vision, and trailing beneath it were three whiplike tendrils. The creature was not quite as tall as a man, and looked far too fragile to be dangerous, but that did not excuse their carelessness in letting it sneak up on them unawares. It reminded Norton of nothing so much as a three-legged spider, or daddy-long-legs, and he wondered how it had solved the problem - never challenged by any creature on Earth - of tripedal locomotion. |
| Technovelgy from Rendezvous With Rama,
by Arthur C. Clarke. Published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1972 Additional resources -
|
Here's a brief quote that illustrates its dervish-like motion:
This quote illustrates how it seemed to accomplish its movements:
It turns out that the 'spiders' are what the author calls 'biological robots' that were designed by the creators of Rama. Clarke coined the word "biot" to describe them. The spiders have 'considerable quantities of light metals.' The spiders have no mouth, no stomach, no gut, no lungs, no circulatory system. So, how does it move?
"Most of the spider is simply a battery, much like that found in electric eels and rays... It's the creature's source of energy."
SF fans will also, of course, remember the great tripods from H.G. Wells' 1898 classic War of the Worlds.
After regarding them passively for several minutes, the creature suddenly moved, and now they could understand why they had failed to observe its arrival. It was fast, and it covered the ground with such an extraordinary spinning motion that the human eye and mind had real difficulty in following it.
...each leg in turn acted as a pivot around which the creature whirled its body... it also seemed to him that every few 'steps' it reversed its direction of spin, while the three whips flickered over the ground like lightning as it moved.
"Eighty percent of the body consist of a honeycomb of large cells... it's the one Raman structure that does exist on earth - though only in a handful of marine animals.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Rendezvous With Rama
More Ideas
and Technology by Arthur C. Clarke
Tech news articles related to Rendezvous With Rama
Tech news articles related to works by Arthur C. Clarke
Spider Tripod Robot-related
news articles:
- STriDER Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot
- Hexapod Emotional Spider Robot Sees Your Face
- JALURO Lunar Robot - 2-Wheeled Open Source
- Lunar Spider-Bot Swarm By Team Italia
- Rotopod Rotational Legged Locomotion Robot
- SLS Robot Spider 'Daddy Longlegs'
- Tabbot Robot Inspired By Spiders (And Clarke?)
- Super Ball Bot Tensegrity Robot For Solar System Exploration
- SpaceHopper Microgravity Robot Lands On Its Feet
| Optimus Robot Will Be A Good Nanny, Says Musk |
| LORIS Passive-Gripper Climbing Robot |
| Athena Smart Security Guard Robot With Face Recognition |
| SpaceHopper Microgravity Robot Lands On Its Feet |
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'The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass...'
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
'Nanny is different,' Tom Fields murmured... 'she's not like a machine. She's like a person.'
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'...we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
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'At the end of each appendage's eight fingers there are tinier appendages...'
'We want to do something to help those who are suffering from tooth loss or absence,' said lead researcher Katsu Takahashi.
