Creepy robot cockroach can squeeze into tiny gaps

It doesn't take a genius to guess what would happen if something 900 times your own body weight landed on you -- you'd be crushed. If you're a human, that is. If you were a cockroach, on the other hand, you'd not only survive the pressure but also be able run at high speed.

That's according to a new study from the University of California, Berkeley. They set out to investigate how the Peroplaneta americana -- or the American cockroach -- is able to squeeze into tiny nooks and crannies so quickly. To do so, they built a palm-sized robot to replicate the behaviour and biology of a cockroach.

The team found that not only could it fit into holes one-tenth of an inch small, they could also run at incredibly high speeds -- even when they're flattened in half.

"What's impressive about these cockroaches is that they can run as fast through a quarter-inch gap as a half-inch gap by reorienting their legs completely out to the side," said Kaushik Jayaram, who lead the study. "They're about half an inch tall when they run freely, but can squish their bodies to one-tenth of an inch -- the height of two stacked pennies."

The compressible robot with articulated mechanisms, or Cram, was able to splay its legs outwards when squashed and was protected by a plastic shield modelled on the tough wings that cover a cockroach's body. The robot was then filmed, using a high-speed camera, running between plates only a quarter inch apart. When the plates were narrowed, the robot was able to continue at high speed through a space only one-tenth of an inch small.