Oh My God, They Made a Flying Robot Spider

Listen, we’re all big fans of science here—but sometimes, science gets it wrong. Case in point: Japanese engineers have created an utterly creepy robot spider that’s also capable of flying around like a drone.

The device—which has the equally abominable acronym “SPherIcally vectorable and Distributed rotors assisted Air-ground amphibious quadruped Robot” (SPIDAR)—was developed by researchers at The University of Tokyo. The bot uses a combination of motors and thrusters to both walk with a “creepy gait” and also take flight and soar right into your nightmares.

At first blush, it seems like these scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. However, multimodal robots (or robots that have several different methods of movement) are highly sought after across a wide variety of sectors. If a bot is capable of moving about on the ground or on air, for instance, it allows for more use cases and flexibility in places like industry or the military.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here