Vibration driven vehicle inspired from grass spike.

Searching and detecting in some harsh environments such as collapsed buildings, pipes, small cracks are crucial for human rescue and industrial detection, military surveillance etc. However, the drawbacks of traditional moving modes of current vehicles make them difficult to perform such tasks. So developing some new vehicles is urgent. Here, we report a Setaria viridis spike's interesting behavior on a vibrating track, and inspired by that phenomena we develop a concept for cargo delivery, and give a detailed discussion about its working mechanism. This vehicle can move on a wide range of smooth and rough surfaces. Moreover, its climbing capability in tilted and even vertical smooth pipe is also outstanding. These features make it suitable for search-rescue, military reconnaissance, etc. Finally, this vehicle can be reduced into micro/ nano-scale, which makes it would play an important role in target-drug delivery, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]