Robotic snake to help people

Last month, Medrobotics , a corporation that is affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University, announced that it will begin selling robot surgeon snakes in Europe. These "snakes", getting into the patient's body through the throat , can help doctors get into difficult accessible places of the human body without incisions, which will lead to a reduction in the patient's recovery time after surgery.

But this is not the only use of robotic snakes that can swim, slide, crawl and climb like real ones. Over the past few years, researchers in laboratories around the world have come up with new, innovative ways to apply these cool, and at the same time scary robots.

Who made the first robotic snake?

Howie Choset, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon , is credited with the paternity of a robotic snake. He founded a company that makes surgical snake robots. Last year at the Huffington Post, he said he was afraid of snakes, but he notes that his robot snake is “kind and benevolent.”
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How do snake robots move?

According to the Carnegie Mellon Biorobotics Lab , there are at least 10 basic robo-snakes. Researchers say that they are able to imitate all the "biological gaits" that have real snakes, and in some cases, develop those that "go beyond the biological abilities of snakes."

Here is a video of a snake climbing a vertical pipe:

Wait, are robotic snakes able to swim ?! How?

Robo-snakes can be afloat, as they are covered with waterproof skin . They glide over the surface of the water using wireless control. Some snakes can swim completely underwater at a depth of 60 meters . And this is incredible!
Here is an example of an underwater robo snake, developed in Tokyo HiBot :

Where robotic snakes can be used

1. Search and rescue

Search and rescue dogs are vital in finding disaster survivors such as a building collapse or an earthquake. But there are places that rescue dogs cannot reach. This is where a robot, developed by Kanegi Mellon from the Biorobotics Lab and Ryerson University Network-Centric Applied Research Team, can help the snake-search robot. They came up with a method called "Canine Assisted Robot Deployment", the essence of which is that when the dog approached the victim, who was stuck somewhere under the concrete blocks, a robo-snake crawled out of the special vest that penetrates small gaps to find the victim, providing lifeguards with streaming video.

2. Purification of oceans and lakes.

One of the employees of the Taiwan Institute of Technology proposed a way to use robots of snakes to get rid of harmful metals in water bodies . The snake itself contains special bacteria that destroy toxic substances, so when the snake passes water through itself, it becomes clean at the exit. This idea is in the early stages of development, but researchers say these snake robots can be used to clean up lakes, rivers, and oceans as early as 2020.

3. Warface

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were the first to develop a snake robot in 2009. The robot can be used to survey buildings, sewer systems, and other structures during an urban war . According to ISO, a robo snake is used to monitor activity in a building and to set explosives. The US Army also worked on the development of robotic snakes .

4. NPP verification

Last year, robo-snakes were used to study a nuclear power plant in Austria. The researchers hope that the robots will be able to find the radioactive parts of the nuclear power plant and storage facilities that may not be safe for humans. Their robots can inspect and make high-quality shots of "dry containers for storing waste, tanks and pipelines in a nuclear power plant." Hitachi Ltd. and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy Ltd. also developed robo snakes this year to explore one of the Fukushima nuclear plants.

5. Heart surgery

6. Exploration of Mars

Researchers in Norway are developing a robot snake that will be able to move around Mars and work with the rover to collect samples. Researchers at Pål Liljebäck and Aksel Transeth told Discovery News last year that while the Spirit rover was lost after it was stuck in the sand. snake robots will be able to avoid such traps.