Harvard University researchers have built a spider robot that can carry items twice its body weight and can be used to transport small sensors.
“The HAMR platform evolved from our exploration of millimeter-scale fabrication and actuation strategies,” said Robert J. Wood,a professor of engineering and applied sciences and a member of the Harvard Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. “Our techniques allow us to create robots that don’t sacrifice complexity as the size is reduced and enabled us to create robots that rival some of the capabilities of their biological counterparts. These robots are as valuable for biological studies as they will eventually be for tasks such as search and rescue and infrastructure inspection.”