FOXSYLVANIA

– – I, for one, will sleep more easily tonight knowing that engineers have finally built a better worm!  Your tax dollars have been hard at work as engineers have created a robot that mimics a worm’s movements, and is capable of crawling along surfaces by contracting segments of its body.

This is not a genetic engineering thing as the creation, called the Meshworm, has no organic components; rather, it is a machine constructed of soft materials that can squeeze through tight places and mold its shape to rough terrain.  The Meshworm can also absorb heavy blows without sustaining damage with the worm-like motion reducing noise, making it suitable for reconnaissance purposes.

Work on the machine was carried out by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University in the U.S., and Seoul National University in South Korea.  The Pentagon’s Darpa research unit supported the Meshworm project, suggesting a potential military use!

Robotic military worms!–What won’t they think of next?!  As this mechanical worm uses an artificial muscle made out of nickel and titanium wire designed to stretch and contract with heat, don’t expect it to be an effective fish bait…but wouldn’t Robotic Worms be a great name for a band, or a Dark Horse comic?

This entry was posted on August 13, 2012 at 1:12 am and is filed under cool things, science. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.