On Spherical Robots

And the notion, that no matter how crazy an idea is, someone, somewhere will have a perspective on it that makes it incredibly useful.

So. Spherical robots – and I must admit, there’s a bit of a fixation for them out there in the world-of-unreality-fighting-towards-the-surface… and I don’t know why, because there’s a major problem with robots that don’t have arms: they can’t solder. Hopeless. Still, there does seem to be this fixation – I think basically because we like the shape – there’s something about a sphere that just seems “right”, or complete, even though it’s not, because it can’t solder or tie shoelaces etc. Still never mind.

I think these ones are rather glam:

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Spybots – Amphibious spybots – not disimilar in intent to Rover off The Prisoner – which was basically a massive floppy balloon that chased people and then caused them to black out.

Or those tiny exploding balls off Aeon Flux

But never mind about that – back to the inflatable ones (and anything inflatable is basically a good idea waiting to happen)… Balloon Windmills!

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What could possibly go wrong? Brilliant.

And as far as I can gather from the little video – it’s basically a spherical robot run backwards