Israeli scientists announced that the snake-robot project, initiated in 2009, is nearing its final stages and ready to be launched.
Though the United States has the most powerful military, Israel, a country of 7 million, produces the most sophisticated hi-tech military hardware. Major buyers of Israeli military hardware include the US, EU, Brazil. Among all, India imports the largest amount of Israeli military hardware and Israel is the second largest military hardware trading partner of China, who gets most of its hi-tech military hardware components from after Russia.
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Using reptiles or insects for information-gathering and killing may have been the favorite scene of Hollywood spy movies in the 1970s, in reality, these technologies are pretty much immature and unrealistic… till now.
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To strengthen its military, Israel army researchers are working on developing a new weapon of war known as the ‘snake-robot’. The researchers spent a significant amount of time studying the movements of live snakes, and implemented it mechanically into the robot to stimulate all movements like real snakes, modeling the slithering mechanoid on biological examples, to ensure that the robotic equivalent mimics them correctly. It can also respond to human movements.
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Controllable by laptop, the ‘robot-snake’ is equipped with camera and microphone capable of recording both video and audio across a variety of battlefield terrains, sending images back to the base live.
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With its flexible joints, the ‘robot-snake’ can slither around and squeeze through caves, tunnels, pipes, crevices buildings and into the soil. It can also hoist itself up, snake-charmer style, to view over obstructions to its line of vision.
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The deadliest feature is however, that the ‘robot snake’ is capable to plant bombs and mines in designated location. It can slither over to the enemy camp and drop ‘feces-bomb’ at the main entrance.
Such ‘snake-robot’ also comes with ‘suicide’ feature. If caught, it can initiate a self-destruct sequence, killing the enemies. It is also potentially able to explode on a target destination, though after which it isn’t good for much any more.
The demonstration above used camouflage skin, real python skin based on terrain color would be used in military scenario.
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Should the model succeed, the Israeli army will be planning on a ‘war robot scorpion’ and ‘war robot fly’.
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