Snake robot might just come in handy during earthquake clean up operations

We do know that Japan is famous for their earthquake engineering, and it is probably because of that that there number of lives saved is much more than what one would expect from a different country when faced with an earthquake of similar magnitude. Well, that aside, cleaning up the mess as well as the search for survivors also require the right tools in order to maximize the chances of survival for those who are still stuck underneath all that rubble – case in point, this unique snake-like robot from Dr. Satoshi Tadokoro, where it relies on a bucket of small pager motors that run along the course of a cable assembly, resulting in a vibrating snake that is around 10 meters long. Its outer portion will come wrapped in a bias-ply fabric which effectively delivers “cilia” down the entire length of the snake biased in one direction. This helps the whole deal crawl along the ground, and a couple of articulating joints on both ends lets one steer and drive the snake in a simple manner.