INNOVATION AT A SNAIL'S PACE

IN THE FAST-MOVING robotics technology field, the latest advance is a robot that moves at a snail's pace. It, in fact, moves not only as slow but just like a snail. Dubbed RoboSnail (though the French may want to call it Escargobot) it's the brainchild of Brian Chan, a graduate student working with Massachusetts Institute of Technology mechanical engineering professor Anette E. Hosoi.

Hosoi and her students were studying the flow of fluids in flexible membranes like arteries. Chan got the idea of putting a motor on a device that floats along a thin film of liquid similar to the way a snail moves on its slime trail. Chan had been doing other research using water striders and, in …