Fifty-foot electromechanical snake prowls CES (pictures)

It might come as a surprise, but is a 50-foot electromechanical snake -- the Titanoboa -- really out of place? CNET doesn't think so.

Daniel Terdiman

Jan. 8, 2013 9:58 a.m. PT

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Titanoboa

It's the Nevada desert. It's arid. There are thousands of people. There are blinky lights and LEDs are dominant. But no, it's not Burning Man.

While it's actually CES here, a flavor of Burning Man is in effect in the form of Titanoboa, a 50-foot-long electromechanical snake. Built by the Vancouver, B.C., arts collective EatArt, Titanoboa (which is here courtesy of its sponsor, Lenovo) showcases mobile and wireless technology; art and science; and plain fun.

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Microcontroller

Titanoboa has a 50-foot-long custom-welded column of aluminum vertebrae, and between each section is a universal joint (like a spinal cord). It's mobile thanks to hydraulic cylinders, and it works thanks to communication between six different "brains," or Arduino micro-controllers, like this one.

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App

The Titanoboa team is at CES thanks to sponsorship from Lenovo, which provided the team with tablets on which they're running a special app. Though this is an Android phone, it shows the basics of the app's potential -- which delivers real-time data such as battery voltage.

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Head from the front

A look at Titanoboa's head, as seen from the front.

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Working on Titanoboa

Two of the Titanoboa team work on the electromechanical snake after it accidentally ran over a piece of string, which subsequently got wrapped up in its inner workings.

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Mondo spider

An earlier project by the EatArt team is the Mondo Spider, a 1,600-pound, eight-legged walking machine originally built for Burning Man 2006.

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Passive wheels

The underside of Titanoboa features dozens of these wheels. But they are passive and are meant mostly to avoid scraping the underside of the massive snake.