Did You Have "Flying Robot Spiders" on Your 2023 Bingo Card?

Robots can be scary, robot spiders are always scary, and they fly now. The University of Tokyo's robotics department has developed a terrifying and impressive robot that walks on four extended legs and flies, too. They call it SPIDAR, which is a tortured acronym for "SPherIcally vectorable and Distributed rotors assisted Air-ground amphibious quadruped Robot." It probably doesn't work any better in Japanese. The word "amphibious" usually means maneuvering in both land and water, but in this case they apparently mean both land and air. The challenge of this robot was to make it powerful enough to walk and fly while keeping the weight low enough for air travel. SPIDAR uses 16 thrusters to fly, and to assist the small servo motors used for walking. This is a prototype that's not all that efficient, and it's extremely loud. But it accomplished its purpose, and will no doubt be refined to make it actually threatening.