Robotic Snakes

I came across an interesting piece of news today, apparently, robotic snakes are being developed to crawl up pipes and other areas normally inaccessible to humans! Yep, it's true.

The Sintef Group, a research company based in Trondheim, Norway, announced that it's designing a robot based on, what else? The snake. I mean, I've heard of robots in space, like the Mars Lander, vacuum cleaner robots and robotic dogs but this is a first!

The 1.5-meter long robots, which are made of aluminum, are being designed to inspect and clean complicated industrial pipe systems that are typically narrow and inaccessible to humans. The intelligent robots have multiple joints to enable them to twist vertically and climb up through pipe systems to locate leaks in water systems, inspect oil and gas pipelines and clean ventilation systems.

Hmmm, they'd probably need to carry a shotgun and pizza if they're inspecting the sewers of New York....

A shotgun if they encounter rats...

And a pizza if they encounter Michaelangelo and the rest of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! :)

In Geekiness,
Benj