Robo-Roach Is Eyeing Up Your Kitchen

I have a dream.  In fact, it's more of a nightmare.  Anyway, in my nightmare my blender, toaster and wireless router meld together and go snuffling around underneath the kitchen cabinets, gobbling up scraps of discarded food and leaving unpleasant droppings.  That's right, I dream about robot cockroaches taking over my appliances.

The cruel people at Case Western Reserve University have obviously been reading my tiny mind and are playing an evil trick on me.  They've gathered up a whole load of springs and wires and made a robot cockroach to chase me.  There's a video of it in action here (29mb download), and more photos after the cut.

Constructed from aluminium, it has 24-degrees of freedom and is pneumatically powered.

Biorobotics Lab [via spurgeonblog]