Japanese researchers develop six-legged "Asterisk" robot that can pick up objects

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The Asterisk six-legged robot

Asterisk with wheeled legs

Top-down view of Asterisk

Detail of Asterisk's legs

Asterisk prepares to pick up an object

Asterisk picks up an object

Asterisk carries an object

The six limbs, symmetrically spaced at 60-degree intervals around its body, give the Asterisk robot its name

Asterisk wows onlookers

Asterisk safely pushes a polygonal prism

The Asterisk robot looks very much like its namesake (Image: Arai Lab)

Article Summary

Fans of the sci-fi film Minority Report will no doubt recall the autonomous insect-like searcher robots deployed to find Tom Cruise's character mid-way through the flick. While not as elegant (or sinister) as its film counterparts, the Asterisk robot being developed by the Arai Robotics Lab at Osaka University in Japan does an excellent job of resembling a big, mechanical bug with some interesting skills. After over six years of development, this unusual "limb-mechanism" robot now boasts an impressive array of functions that may soon find it performing vital tasks in numerous areas of society, including search and rescue.

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