This robot has some eerie similarities to cockroaches

If the sight of a skittering bug makes you squirm, you may want to look away — a new insect-sized robot created by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, can scurry across the floor at nearly the speed of a darting cockroach. Small-scale robots like these could be advantageous in search and rescue missions, squeezing and squishing into places where dogs or humans can’t fit, or where it may be too dangerous for them to go, said Yichuan Wu, first author of the paper, who completed the work as a graduate student in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley through the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute partnership. To read the full story, visit: Video produced by Stephen McNally Additional video provided by: Liwei Lin’s lab Jayaram, Kaushik, and Robert J. Full. “Cockroaches traverse crevices, crawl rapidly in confined spaces, and inspire a soft, legged robot.“ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113.8 (2