This Agile Robotic Rat Can Scurry Into The Tiniest Spaces During Rescue Missions

Most robotic animals, like Spot the dog and this robotic mountain goat, may be fun to play with, but they aren’t exactly the most equipped for venturing into nooks and crannies with their large, metallic bodies. 

As such, scientists from the Beijing Institute of Technology, China, set out to create a novel robotic rat—named ‘SQuRo’ (small-sized quadruped robotic rat)—that could serve as a more agile adaption to perform multiple motions and carry payloads. 

Modeled on rats in nature, which are able to navigate small spaces due to their elongated slim bodies and agility, the scientists designed the robot to mimic the creatures’ joints, featuring degree of freedom (DOF) configurations in each limb to reproduce similar movements. 

The resulting robot can now perform a whole series of motions akin to its natural counterpart, including crouching-to-standing, walking, crawling, and turning, and can even recover from a fall by controlling its limbs and cervical parts to adjust its center of mass. 

Furthermore, the ‘SQuRo’ demonstrated it was able to pass through an irregular narrow passage just 90 mm (3.5 inches) wide, cleared an obstacle of 30 mm (1 inch), and went down a slope of 15° in a stable manner. 

Could this robotic rat be the answer to rescue missions or transporting payloads to places that are hard to reach? 

Well, with it being much smaller than other similar robots, and the fact that it can carry up to 91% of its own weight, it certainly seems that ‘SQuRo’ could represent a new era of smaller, more agile robots as opposed to the large, creaky ones we’re used to. 

[via New Atlas and Beijing Institute of Technology, China / Eureka Alert, cover image via Qing Shi from Beijing Institute of Technology, China / Eureka Alert]