Robo-Mule Gets Wheel, Leg Blend describes David Hambling’s idea for a robotic “mule” for infantry soldiers:
His idea is to develop something that is part wheel, part leg, combining the strengths of both. It’s not a matter of reinventing the wheel so much as repackaging it.‘Nature doesn’t generally use wheels,’ Hillis explains, ‘because although they are good for smooth surfaces, there are few smooth surfaces in nature. In fact we spent a great deal of effort building flat surfaces for wheels to roll on. It would be better to have a wheel which could go on any surface.’
Robot legs are complex and inefficient — typically they rely on dynamic stability, which means that a legged robot falls over when power turned off. Hillis built a large robot dinosaur for the Disney organisation, and says that the amazing thing is that it walks at all.
The new alternative would be as simple and cheap as a wheel but with the all-terrain capability of legs.