Penn Students Designing Next Generation of Our Ice-Skating Robot Overlords

RHex the robot has better motor skills than you do.

The Daily Pennsylvanian reports on RHex, a robot that Penn researchers are teaching to ice skate:

The paper reports;

RHex, a research project created over a decade ago by engineering professor Daniel Koditschek, is a robot designed to handle a variety of terrains, including desert, rocks and, most recently, ice. The team hopes that the robot can one day be used for search-and-rescue missions as well as data collection.

“The idea of having RHex run on ice is to study the phenomenon and see what goes on,” said David Isele, a third year graduate student in the school of Engineering and Applied Science and main researcher for the ice trial. “Exploring its behavior on ice expands the breadth of what the robot is able to handle.”

Which means that when the Metal Ones come, your attempts to flee to Northern Canada will be of no use: The robots will be able to handle the rocky, icy terrain … because Penn students showed them how.

Below: A RHex subduing nature, as it will soon subvert all of humanity.