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Ants are unique in that they can carry more than 100 times their own body weight. And when working in groups, they can carry pretty large objects.
Researchers at the Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Laboratory at Stanford University focused on the ant’s anatomy and designed tiny robots that can pull thousands of times their weight, move like gecko lizards and mimic bats, reported The New York Times.
A team of six tiny ‘microTug’ robots, weighing 3.5 ounces total, can pull a car weighing 3,900 pounds — that’s nearly 2 tons. The video below from the researchers shows the ant-like robots pulling a car. The robots can pull more than 2,000 times their own weight.
The university’s research is published in the paper “Let’s All Pull Together: Principles for Sharing Large Loads in Microrobot Teams.”
“By considering the dynamics of the team, not just the individual, we are able to build a team of our ‘microTug’ robots that, like ants, are super strong individually, but then also work together as a team,” David Christensen, a graduate student and one of the authors of the research paper, told The New York Times.
“By considering the dynamics of the team, not just the individual, we are able to build a team of our ‘microTug’ robots that, like ants, are super strong individually, but then also work together as a team,” David Christensen, a graduate student and one of the authors of the research paper, told The New York Times.The paper will be presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in May in Stockholm, Sweden.
