Oh no! Japan, no! The oncoming 'Squid' UAVs

I think I've seen this movie. Was it one of the the Matrix films? Was it Skyline? It was totally not a Japanese film with robot octopuses. If it had been it'd be totally NSFW and this post would get deleted, I'm more than sure. Japan's interest in things with tentacles seems to have crossed into their work on drones. For behold!




Researchers at the University of Tokyo have been a drone from segments. Ones that move independently but still hover in an interesting, almost unsettling way. The bot is called the 'Spidar'[1,2,3]. Watch the longer video to see how it might be used in several simple test ways.



My ribbing aside, this could actually be fairly interesting as a concept. Not so much for the assisted walking, though that was pretty cool. I am thinking of extrapolating the other tests and allowing it to navigate multiple strange terrains. Or carry and use specific tools on appendages. Or perhaps others. IDK.

It is a new and interesting concept though. What do you think it could be used for? Besides...that.



1. newatlas.com...
2. spectrum.ieee.org...
3. arxiv.org... (paper on the project, warning, pdf)

a reply to: anzha

A bunch of not very good things come to mind.
Ohh I bet DARPA has some toys like this is use for some reason somewhere with some three letter agencie.

Im in agreement with first reply..a bunch of not very good things.

The conspiracy would be if these were used as they were conceived, more than likely a humanitarian thought initiated the process, but our jacked up world turns innocent to insideous.