Entertainment

Dancing Robot Spiders

Posted 3 May 2001 at 21:32 UTC by steve Share This

phooky alerted us to an upcoming event sponsered by the Robotics Art Club. The event, called The Dance of the Water Spiders, consists of eight 6' diameter, 8-legged, autonomous robots floating on the Charles River in Boston and dancing in time to an original music composition by Ernesto Klar of the Klaresque Ensemble. Performance is open to the public and begins at 1pm on May 6.

Cool, posted 3 May 2001 at 22:03 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

Cool.

How do they move around? Leg motion or what?

Movement, posted 3 May 2001 at 22:26 UTC by steve » (Master)

Not sure... best I can tell from the web site and pictures is that the spider's body is a big plastic sphere. The bottom of the sphere is in the water and there's a motor that spins the sphere - so it looks like the movement of sphere against the water pushes them around. There doesn't appear to be any means of steering them but it must be possible as the page says they use a rotating polaroid sonar for obstacle avoidance.

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