《The secrets of nature’s grossest creatures, channeled Into robots》Part3/3

Source：

http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_full_the_secrets_of_nature_s_grossest_creatures_channeled_into_robots?language=en

My engineering colleague at Berkeleydesigned with his studentsa novel manufacturing techniquewhere you essentially origami the exoskeleton,you laser cut it, laminate it,and you fold it up into a robot.And you can do that now in less than 15 minutes.These robots are highly compliant robots,and they're remarkably robust as a resultof these features. They even have some of the behaviors of the cockroaches.So they can use their smart, compliant bodyto transition up a wall in a very simple way.They even have some of the beginnings of the rapid inversion behavior where they disappear.

Now we want to know why they can go anywhere.We discovered that they can go throughthree-millimeter gaps,the height of two pennies, two stacked pennies,and when they do this,they can actually run through those confined spacesat high speeds,although you never see it.To understand it better,we did a CT scan of the exoskeletonand showed that they can compress their bodyby over 40 percent.We put them in a materials testing machineto look at the stress strain analysisand showed that they can withstand forces800 times their body weight,and after this they can fly and runabsolutely normally.