Gregory Nemec
It is not the glistening metal humanoid typically evoked by the word
robot. Instead, “PancakeBot,” as it’s endearingly known, is a small cylindrical thing, 15 centimeters long, reminiscent of a blood-pressure cuff. It’s lying on a flat wooden plank. You can tell it’s switched on when a silicone bladder where the cylinder meets the wood fills with air, like the inflation of a toad’s throat. The cylinder rocks unevenly a few times until it rolls forward a smidgen. Another bladder inflates. The cylinder rocks again, rolls, gets a little farther.
The process continues until the robot reaches a 14-degree slope. Here, the cylinder deflates into a flat rectangle. Then it begins its ascent inchworm-style, arching up, then flattening out, arching then flattening.