One Giant Leap for Robot-Kind  9 February 2009 (All day)  Chen
Li et al.  Dune buggy. The SandBot mimics desert animals that
move rapidly across sand.  For any robot that keeps getting
stuck in the sand, help is on the way. Scientists have
engineered a droid that mimics the locomotion of desert animals,
allowing it to traverse loose terrain with ease. If perfected,
the new design should keep the next wave of robots--earthbound
and planetary explorers alike--rolling across dunes at a good
clip.  Anyone who has tried to drive across stretches of soft-
packed sand knows how quickly the attempt can end up hopelessly
mired. Even dune buggies, jeeps, and other specialty vehicles
sometimes get trapped. The reason is that the loose
agglomeration of sand grains often collapses into a hole under
the weight of a vehicle's wheels and provides too little
traction for those wheels to roll back out. Robots, such as
NASA's Mars rovers, have the same problem: If their limbs move
too fast over loose soil, they risk digging them