Snakebot inspires dreams, haunts nightmares

Robots that take their inspiration from nature are an old hat, and it's hard to fault the engineers. Whether you're a firm believer in evolution or you're in camp I.D., there is no denying that nature is an efficient and elegant designer. Carnegie Mellon's Biorobotics Lab used snakes as the basis for their latest creation, and dubbed the slithering bot "Uncle Sam," most likely due to its red, white and blue color scheme. Uncle Sam can roll, wriggle and sidewind to move, but it can also wrap it's self around poles and trees and climb straight up.

 Scientists at Carnegie Mellon studied the various ways in which snakes move and then "taught" those motions to their modular robot. Unlike other nature-inspired 'bots, Uncle Sam is actually composed of several repeating segments simplifying construction. The repeated segments also make building the bot bigger or smaller much easier. Enough with the science stuff though, we know what you're really here to see: the creepy video of the tree-climbing snake-bot after the break.