Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 15:45 GMT
"HyDRAS-Ascent (Hyper-redundant Discrete Robotic Articulated Serpentine)"
This is brilliant and well worth the cost of development. Perhaps "ASCENT" could have stood for "ASsisted Climbing / Envelopment Neural Technology".
Or they could have had SUPA-SNakE ("Strangely Undulating Perpetually-Angulated Sinister NAKed Eel").
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 15:45 GMT
Not Puzzling, it is unique, it does something that does not occur in nature. (Like the Wheel!)
Rolling up the pole, is a clever trick, I guess it doesnt happen in Nature because snakes have a top side and a bottom side. whereas this spiral rolling motion requires all sides to be the same.
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 16:57 GMT
...the COUNTER-rotating camera-segment, so that the operators don't get massive vertigo as the snake rolls up the pole?
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 21:00 GMT
..read that headline and thing..."hrmmmmm" with a raised eyebrow?
do i need to grow up??? ;P
Posted Monday 29th December 2008 09:46 GMT
The good folks at Virginia Tech have a long and proud history of interesting acronyms -- http://www.vtmagazine.vt.edu/spring04/letters.html -- including a winning "rename- the- college" contest entry of Eastern Institute of Enlightenment and Intellectual Outgrowth (or E-I-E-I-O).
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