Meet ReachBot, the Reaching Robot

Retractable metal tape measures are a wonderfully useful design for their main purpose and a lot of fun for other purposes. Robotics engineers at Stanford University have found another great use for them in making a small robot move around in uneven, unfamiliar terrain. ReachBot uses four retractable tape measures to move about the way Spider-Man hops between buildings using his webs. The robot pushes a tape measure out, grabs something, and then pulls itself to closer to the object by retracting the tape measure. By using a combination of all four tape measures, it can navigate in whatever direction it needs to go. The prototype above uses real-world tape measures, either for their convenience or to show us the concept in a manner we all understand. Great idea, either way. The goal is to develop robots that can explore other planets, including their caves and deep valleys where other robots would become stuck. It would make a pretty cool toy, too.