Aqua Hexapod Gets New 'Ninja Legs'

RHex-type legged robots are great at getting around. Like, really, really, really great. They can walk and run on land, and a RHex-based hexapod called Aqua can swim in water as well, with just a simple change of legs from something rigid for walking to something flexible for swimming. Technically, this makes RHex amphibious, but in practice, it's more like the robot is amphibious if you've got a human around to swap its legs out. The problem is that it's impossible to make legs that are flexible enough for efficient swimming and simultaneously rigid enough for efficient walking. And when we say "impossible," we mean "impossible until someone figured out how to do it," which happened at IROS last month. Read more at http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/iros-2013…