ICRA, the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, is always a big conference for showing off cool new toys and methods for robotics. It is very difficult to get a paper there, and I am hoping that I can get one in for next year.
In the meantime, check out this very cool video of a robot with Bernoulli pads climbing across several different surfaces. Bernoulli pads work by sending a high speed jet of air out of the pad that generates a low pressure. This tries to suck the pad down to the surface. What is very cool is that the pad makes no contact with the surface.
The video for your enjoyment:
The short article is here, courtesy of the IEEE Automaton Blog.
Posted by elkaim at May 31, 2011 2:33 PM