Gadgetory

it is almost impossible to kill a cockroach which is why a team of researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have been putting cockroaches to the ultimate test in an attempt to build the perfect robotic model the creepy insects the group devised an obstacle course for the cockroaches to better understand how they survive being almost squished and squeezed by trapping them in tight places to see how they get out the team found that cockroaches can compress their body to the width of a coin by moving their legs out of the way of their torso and can move quickly through very confined spaces at high speeds cockroaches can also withstand up to 900 times their own body weight being slammed on top of their backs which is why have you ever tried to crush one then it just runs away turns out that their shells are malleable it can contort to fit into tiny spaces and mold around corners with this knowledge of the cockroaches superhero-like abilities the students built a robot they named cramp which stands for compressible robot with articulated mechanisms the robot has a flexible shell and can compress its body much like the cockroach it can't maneuver inside of very cramped spaces the team believes that this type of robot can be very useful in disaster situations it could be deployed into collapsed buildings to crawl through tiny spaces in the rubble then locate possible survivors you can read the entire study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences under the title cockroaches traverse crevices crawl rapidly in confined spaces and inspire a soft legged robot click the link in the article and the crave blob monster if the idea of a cockroach robot crawling through the rubble of disaster zone to find you in the darkness wasn't terrifying enough then make sure you check out Amanda cruisers rundown of the eight robots that will haunt nightmares some of which include the wake up machine face-slapping alarm clock which looks pretty weird and scary bored how about this robotic printer that paints portraits of an artist in his own blood which gets me feeling losing just thinking about it it's all at crave Tina calm so go and check it out and Sheree checkout crave at crave Tina calm you can follow creme on twitter at crave and this week's crave giveaway is a custom design timbuktu messenger bag CNET's Jessica dolt court visited the Timbuktu factory and personally designed a cool-looking bag one winner gets the ticket home for free this week on crave go to the blog and enter the wing you