“When the robots finally come to harvest us, they’ll probably descend from the skies and then scuttle, spider-like, into our homes and shelters, just likeMadLab Industries‘ terrifyingly ominous Hexa. The combined horror of a six-bladed hexacopter and a 6-legged hexapod, the omnidirectional robot can either tackle terrain on-foot or take to the air to avoid obstacles, then using the multipurpose legs as a grapple to snatch up objects (objects that, it has to be said, are roughly the size of a human baby’s head in MLI’s demo video).
The DIY ‘bot pairs a PhantomX Hexapod kit and a custom MLI hexacopter, using carbon-fiber and aluminum components to keep the weight down. In total, the whole thing tips the scales at 10.8 pounds, and is strong enough to not only transport its own weight, but light objects it can grasp with its legs.
Possible future improvements could include the ability for the two sections to detach and be independently controlled, meaning Hexa could fly in, deposit the hexapod, and then fly back out again. That could eventually be useful for search & rescue operations, transporting Hexa-style hunting drones to a disaster area and then leaving them to rummage through the rubble for survivors.”
personalfactory: This project is absolutely astonishing. I don’t give a fcuk it may be used by bad guys in some totalitarian regime, army or terrorists…
… it is possible to use it in so many good and harmless ways:
- recognition drone to build 3d map of rooms where terrorists hidden hostages
- swarm of Hexas building shelters for unexpected weather disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes
- army of Hexas cleaning after big events – little and light rubbish like foils, cardboards or aluminum cans can be transport to separate bins and recycled
- urban art – creating mossgrafitti, deploying seed bombs, stencils
- many, many other non-violent apps
via: personalfactory