I was listening to the World Service last night. To be more precise I was drifting off to sleep and so wasn’t paying too much attention when something caught my attention. It was an article about robotic snakes.

At first I thought this was just a toy, something to frighten guests with at a Christmas party, but as the scientist who was behind the project talked I realised that there were a lot of beneficial uses to a robotic snake.

You are probably the same as me in thinking that robots will either be humanoid or like the  rovers that were sent to Mars. The advantage of a snake is that it is able to explore relatively small spaces due to it’s narrowness. The scientist went onto explain that if coupled with Nano Technology it would be possible to produce a robot that could be injected into the veins of a person and then navigate to say the heart and treat the person from the inside. Thus preventing major surgery having to take place and vastly improving survival rates.

I went on You Tube and was amazed at how many robotic snakes are out there. I’ve embedded a video of one, to start with I thought it was a fairly ugly thing, but when it takes to the water watching it’s movements is beautiful, almost hypnotic. For a moment you could almost believe that it was a living organism with the graceful way it moves, sensing it’s own environment.

Here’s the video, if you want to see more just search for “robotic snake” on You Tube.