Those Amazing Japanese and their Astounding Robots!

Go on, watch this swimming snakebot and try to convince yourself after the first few seconds that what you’re watching is just a machine.

What makes this thing particularly amazing is that it can move just as smoothly over land as it can in liquid. I can easily imagine this ‘bot lurking beneath the glacial sheets of Dione or Tethys, or slithering across the vast trackless wasteland of Mars…or for that matter, curving its way sinuously across the ice in Antarctica on a more terrestrial science mission. Either way, it has to be the most fascinating robotic innovation I’ve seen in a very long time!