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# See Why This Snake Inspired Robot Is So Important

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/QMjdEGcM.m3u8" -->
## Video: See Why This Snake Inspired Robot Is So Important

[Watch (HLS stream): See Why This Snake Inspired Robot Is So Important](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/QMjdEGcM.m3u8) (1:35)

![See Why This Snake Inspired Robot Is So Important](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/QMjdEGcM/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2015-07-27. Robotics researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a modular snake robot designed to safely perform tasks that aren't easily done by humans. From performing surgery to inspecting pipes at nuclear power plants, the robot is changing how_


---

Jul 27, 2023 6:35 PM UTC

---

## More From This Series

[All Videos](https://time.com/video/)

[Alan Alda Speaks at Carnegie Mellon University Commencement 2015](/video/upaDkEqX/)

### Alan Alda Speaks at Carnegie Mellon University Commencement 2015

[Autonomy in Robotics](/video/Kwe7Rt4a/)

### Autonomy in Robotics

[Moley Robotics](/video/ZhICmbde/)

### Moley Robotics

---


## Transcript

[ MUSIC ] I am Chaohui Gong and I am a Ph. D. student working at The Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University. [ MUSIC ] We have developed a snake robot for over 20 years. Some of the practical applications are including urban search and rescue And also we use this robot for some potential applications like industrial inspections. This robot is very safe and compliant so it can work with people for a lot of medical handling. And also it can be used for whole lot of manufacturing applications because this system is flexible and it can be easily reconfigured. What you just saw [ UNKNOWN ] snake monster is a spider- looking robot.

The snake monster actually is also made of identical modules we used to build the snake robot. The amazing feature of that robot is, we put identical [ UNKNOWN ] into different configurations. Now we can build a spider- looking robot as well, so we can change the production pipeline and quickly adapt to new generation of electronic development. So the reason we want robot to look like an animal is because as nature has demonstrated a lot of great capabilities. For example, snakes can Move almost in any type of environment. So we want to took that design from nature, understand how they achieve that mobility and being able to engineering the the similar level of mobility in a robotic system.

[ MUSIC ]

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