Disney Research has been working on a new robot in collaboration with ETH Zurich, they have been working to fix the fundamental problem with robot cars, which is that when they hit a wall they can’t do much except stop or reverse. VertiGo is the solution that they have come up with, it’s a small robot car that’s capable of driving up walls. Disney describes it as a wall climbing robot that is capable of “transitioning from the ground to the wall.”
VertiGo has two tiltable propellers that provide it with thrust to climb on the wall. It has four wheels with one pair being steerable. Each propeller has two degrees of movement to adjust the thrust’s direction.
It thus extends the ability of robots to be functional in both urban and indoor environments by enabling them to tranisition from the ground to the wall and back again quickly and easily.
Since VertiGo users propellers it’s capable of going over indentations like masonry due to the propellers that are providing thrust when it’s climbing up the wall. It’s this choice of two propellers that makes everything happen, with the thrust being applied towards the wall using the rear propeller and in the upward direction from the propeller on the front, this results into a flip onto the wall.
Sadly you can’t get your hands on one right now since it’s a research project for now, Disney hasn’t said if has any plans of launching VertiGo as a consumer product.
Filed in . Read more about Disney. Source: disneyresearch