The robot spider that shrieks as it walks

While this eight legged creature is still a prototype, UC Santa Barbara alum Matthew Garten hopes to debut the finished robot for this year’s Bay Area Maker Faire.  Currently the wooden joints in the legs let out a loud squeal that he’s hoping won’t be in the final version (but definitely give off a creepy vibe in his test video).

The technology he’s using is known as the Klann linkage and essentially was developed in the mid-1990s to replace a robot’s wheels by simulating an animal’s walk.

Matthew, seeing himself as both an engineer and inventor, says that robots roam his home.  He’s worked on a wide range of projects from MEMS stem cell sorting to rocket-propelled grenade defense. Also you may have seen Matthew’s open source steampunk Arduino watch on Instructables a few years ago.

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