It’s a bird, it’s a bat, it’s a robot!
A new advancement in robotics, the multi-modal mobility morphobot, or M4, could bring innovative solutions to everything from space exploration to package delivery, with a little help from the animal kingdom.
Designed by a team of researchers led by Alireza Ramezani, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University, M4 is a shapeshifter. It has eight modes of mobility––from crawling to flying––and, taking inspiration from birds, bats and even meerkats, it can change seamlessly between them.
In one moment, M4 could be a four-wheeled vehicle driving like any number of other wheeled robots. The next moment, it could be using those wheels to crawl, wheel by wheel, like a lizard. And the next moment, it could rotate all four wheels, which also house propellers, to become…
