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This slithering robot could one day save your life.
Let's face it.
Robots can do a lot of things you and I can't.
But for some, the best part is less about what they can do, and more about where they can go.
This is the Guardian S from robotics company Sarcos.
Its nickname, surprise surprise The snake.
This thing does it all.
Crawls up metal walls, thanks to its magnetize body.
Scoffs at stairs, and it can roll over on command a hell of a lot better than my dog's.
Name Sarco sounds familiar.
You may have caught Lexi's beta test on the company's exoskeleton.
The guardian XO.
And much like the XO, the snake is designed to augment human capabilities, all be it in a pretty different way.
Think of it like a scout is operative by simple remote, build to keep people from having to go on to dangerous environments.
So the idea, you can take this robot and send it in to the location.
It can tell you if there hazardous gases or if there is some other kind of hazardous thing that might damage or injury the people or things.
You may be thinking this is what drones are for sure but most rounds can fit into tight places, and are limited by the flight times, this snake is designed to slip into those places drones can reach, like the inside of a pipe.
It can run for three and a half hours non stop or stand with circus calls surveillance mode for 12 hours.
It's equipped with multiple cameras, six of them in fact, including an infrared camera, and microphones which feedback audio in real-time.
It can be customized to detect hazardous gas vibrations.
Really it can be fitted with any type of sensor you can think of.
So you can send it into a disaster zone to find out whether it's actually safe to send people in.
It can even broadcast audio from the remote.
[SOUND] Now that could be useful for communicating with people who are trapped after an earthquake or even in hostage situations.
That right there.
That's a storage space.
Sarcos is nicknamed the sandwich box.
That can be used to deliver supplies to people that you otherwise couldn't reach.
And this snake is built so we can navigate that rough, uneven terrain that you might expect in a disaster zone.
And yes it's water resistant either IPC65 OR IPC2 depending on the model.
Another major advantage of the snake over a drone is the learning curve to control it.
If you have ever tried to fly a drone you know it can take a while to master.
Controlling the snake is essentially like playing a video game, meaning rescuers and inspection crews could start using these pretty much right away without any special training and weighing in and around 17 pounds.
You can carry these just about anywhere.
This isn't just a pet project.
You can buy one of these right now.
They started $62,000 for the base model, and from there it depends on what kind of customizations you want.
And don't be surprised if you start hearing more about these.
Sarcos already has customers for The Guardian S.
General Electric ran tests with them to inspect ducks for dust and debris, And they found using the robots significantly speed up the process and kept their employees safer as they didn't need to get on the scissor list to do those inspections themselves.
That's it for this week.
I'm Andy Altman, see you in the future.
