Last week Rhett introduced me to Hex Bugs, and I had to go out and buy a starter kit. Rhett’s thing is taking video and doing physics analysis. Mine is slow-motion:
The bugs vibrate, as you might be able to tell, and the angled legs give them a forward motion bias from the shaking. They even go up an incline of ten or 20 degrees. I tested three bugs in the hallway, where they were free to roam; one had a tracking bias clockwise, another anti-clockwise, and the third ran pretty straight. The legs appear to be silicone, so it’s not easy to change how they are bent (elastic deformation) to see if you can change that.
There are other form factors as well. More on that as my wallet is drained.
I think you’ll be disappointed by the battery life of the other form factors…they are not nearly as efficient. My cousins got these for Christmas, and I was just as fascinated by them, but the battery was dead in the larger, gear-driven model. The drive mechanism reminds me of the piezoelectric actuators that are becoming so popular. Very effective at small scales.