Chaos is a cool little robot that is difficult to stop - its four independently controlled tracks let this feisty little guy flail its way past just about anything. Stairs, train tracks, rubble piles, gravel, steep grades of loose debris - the Chaos robot keeps on coming.
Chaos is virtually silent; its battery pack keeps it going for up to three hours and its "ultra-efficient" motor and gearbox let it pack a lot of power into its small size.
Chaos can be fitted with an arm and sensors for HAZMAT situations; it can be operated from a handheld controller or use multi-vehicle autonomous behaviors.
(Chaos robot video)
If you keep watching the video, you notice how it gets stuck and then starts flailing away at obstacles with its flipper-like tracks. It looks oddly like a man trying to swim across rubble. At the end of the video it finds itself flipped over; it performs a cunning maneuver to reorient itself that a man could never do.
The guys who created and test Chaos obviously have a lot of fun with it. They seem to believe that it makes a nifty "land surfing" device, easily climbing stairs with a man standing on top of it.
If you're thinking you've seen tracks that are sort of like these, you're right. Remember Roomba's Brother PackBot?
Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?'' - Isaac Asimov (1940)
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Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
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