Essential linkage: We bow down to our new robot-snake overlords!
The big science brains at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States love snakes. Especially robotic snakes. Howie Choset, an associate professor of robotics at CMU, and his team have spent the last ten years getting their robo-reptiles smaller, more prehensile, and better at adapting to their environment.
Now, after designing bots to help in urban search and rescue operations and coming up with precision bots for motor vehicle detailing, Choset's turned his team's skills to matters military and come up a snake-bot-surgeon.
In concert with the U.S. Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, Choset's been working on a device that attaches to stretchers, and that allows a surgeon to remotely diagnose a patient. You can scope out a video of it here at MIT's Technology Review site.
It's a fascinating looking device, and given the importance of early diagnosis and triage in combat traumas, not doubt a supremely important invention. But we worry about the poor unconcious soldier who's just been pulled from the burning wreck of his HUMVEE, only to come to strapped down underneath the INHUMAN ROBOTIC GAZE OF HIS NEW SNAKE MASTER.
Or maybe we're just being silly.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012