SPIDAR (Spherically Vectorable and Distributed Rotors Assisted Air-Ground Amphibious Quadruped Robot) by the University of Tokyo is basically a bizarre flying robot spider meets drone. This quadruped robot has vectorable leg thrusters and propellers instead of standard actuators, enabling it to take to the skies at the push of a button.
Flying robots may not sound impressive, but SPIDAR weighs a hefty 33-pounds, making its ability to fly even more impressive. When walking on ground, it utilizes servos, paired with the previously mentioned thrusters on its limbs for movement. This does require both the servos and thrusters to be properly synced to properly coordinate the leg movements. This current prototype is only able to walk for up to 18-minutes and fly for 9-minutes before depleting its battery.
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Although several air-ground bipedal robots have been developed by different research teams, to our best knowledge, this is the first time to achieve the hybrid quadruped robot. We develop such a novel multi-limbed platform not only for the multimodal locomotion, but also for the extension of the manipulation ability in both terrestrial and aerial domains,” said the researchers.
