Multimedia Gallery - Tiny robots move like the common cockroach, sharing its gait, stride and other dynamics.

June 8, 2016

Tiny robots move like the common cockroach, sharing its gait, stride and other dynamics.

Ronald Fearing has been developing biomimetic robots capable of remarkable feats of speed and maneuverability. With his team at the University of California, Berkeley, he designs robots to share traits with insects, lizards and other animals. One insect model they used for their designs is the common cockroach, sharing its gait, bouncing characteristics, stride frequency and other dynamics.

To create the miniRoACH (RObotic Autonomous Crawling Hexapod), Fearing and graduate students Aaron Hoover and Erik Steltz invented a scaled version of the rapid prototyping method known as the smart composite microstructure (SCM) process.

Learn more in the NSF special report A Foundation for Robotics: Designing cooperative, intelligent systems of the future.

Credit: A. Hoover, UC Berkeley

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