New Korean Robot Dog Marvel May Be Small, But It Can Climb Walls and Ceilings

Robot dogs are becoming more and more popular. And we’re not talking about the fancy “pets” of controversial social media celebrities, but about ones that are meant to carry out serious tasks. Boston Dynamics’ Spot, the yellow robot dog, is perhaps the best known in this category. Both playful and powerful Spot has impressed everyone with numerous tricks.

But there are also those developed for military applications, which don’t get love from everyone. Some see them as the symbols of an apocalyptic future straight from Sci-Fi movies, where four-legged machines carry weapons and become the masters. If we can step back from those concerns, we’d be able to admire the truly incredible engineering performance of these groundbreaking robots.

Earlier this year, the infamous Vision 60 got itself a tail. Not just any old tail, but an autonomous one that helps it swim at three knots (3.4 mph/5.4 kph). This turned the Q-UGV (quadrupedal unmanned ground vehicle) into an amphibious beast, the first one of its kind on the market. The goal is to make it even better at supporting military operations on the field. Already capable of inspecting dangerous areas and even carrying a weapon, it can now also cross small bodies of water with ease.

A more recent innovation comes from South Korea. Marvel isn’t just a cute name, but actually stands for “Magnetically Adhesive Robot for Versatile and Expeditious Locomotion.” It was recently presented by researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, who published a paper on that in Science Robotics.

Marvel is just 13 inches long (33 cm) and weighs only 18 pounds (8.1 kg) but boasts a real superpower. It can climb on flat and curved metal surfaces, and even ceilings. How fast does it do that? Well, somewhere between 1.6 to 2 feet (0.4/0.6 meters) per second.

And there’s more. It can even tackle challenges along the way, such as a thick layer of dust or rust covering certain surfaces, gaps, and barriers (that are not too big for its size, of course). Marvel is fitted with electromagnetic legs that have tips made of a new type of material, called magnetorheological elastomer (MER) which combines qualities similar to rubber with electromagnetic conductivity.

But Marvel doesn’t sport these ninja-like skills just to show off. It could become a serious “inspector,” helping safety teams in various industrial environments. For example, it could climb on large storage tanks, vessels, and bridges.

The ultimate goal of innovations such as the wall-climbing Marvel is to make certain jobs that were highly risky for humans less dangerous, and more effective.