This robot flies, lands and crawls up walls like a bug - CNET

The lab has been working on building climbing robots for some years, starting with spined feet that grip rough surfaces, much the same way that spiny insect feet grip surfaces. Although the lab went on to look at adhesive feet, the spined feet proved to be the most efficient method for SCAMP. They are lightweight and low-power, both of which are important for a flying machine.

The feet are also on weirdly long legs that make the robot look distinctly insect-like. They look at lot like anteae, but they're actually based on the long legs of creatures such as daddy-long-legs spiders and stick insects. This is because long, thin, low-weight legs allow the robot to take fewer steps, which ends up more efficient.

It's the transition between flying and wall-climbing that's the really tricky bit. The lab has also been working on this for some time with both fixed-wing robots and quadrotor robots. What they found was that the robots lost control as they moved close to the wall.

For SCAMP, they implemented a long tail. The robot approaches the wall rear-first, with the tail making first contact. This impact is then detected by accelerometers, which stabilises the robot and acts as a pivot point from which it can straighten up, pushing itself against the wall with the rotors at maximum until the feet are pressed up against the wall and engaged.

The robot can then commence its climb. If, at any point, it slips, the sensitive accelerometers detect the free-fall and the rotors tu back on to push SCAMP back up against the wall. The rotors can also be employed to correct the angle of the robot when its weight cantilevers too far from the wall as it climbs.