IT LOOKS like a crab, climbs walls like a fly, and could have been invented by the creators of Thunderbirds.
"Robug", unveiled by British scientists last week, is a walking rescue robot designed to go where humans fear to tread.
Specifically, it has been built to venture into the heart of a nuclear disaster like Chernobyl - and, if necessary, drag people out. But its designers from Portsmouth University in England are also looking at a large number of other applications in industry, mining, and possibly the military.
The large yellow robot has eight legs, each of which can pull 65 kilograms, with sucker feet that enable it to climb sheer vertical walls. In the middle of its body is a single fold away arm with a claw that will enable it to drag an unconscious man weighing 100 kilograms out of a disaster zone.
Robug III - minus its arm - was the star attraction at last week's New Frontiers In Science exhibition organised by the Royal Society in London. Its creator, Gurvinder Singh Virk, professor of control engineering at Portsmouth University, said: "We were asked by the European Commission to build a rescue robot following the Chernobyl disaster. The people in Brussels were really frightened about what could be done if something like that happened again.
"The idea was to make a machine that could handle anything. It can walk, climb over debris, and even climb up sheer walls when it has to. It has a gyroscope for balance and cameras to enable the operator to see where it's going. It also has a certain degree of intelligence - if its legs hit something it knows it has hit something and turns."
He admitted that the sight of Robug crawling up a wall can be unnerving to say the least. "When it's about eight feet above you it really looks frightening," he said.
The project is part of the Telman Programme, which was set up in the 1980s to link together centres of excellence across Europe to find solutions to specific technological and scientific problems.
The machine cost £800,000 to develop, with EU funding in a partnership with scientists from Germany, Belgium and Denmark. It is likely to be the first of a family of similar robots adapted for jobs such as maintenance, inspection and safety tasks in ships, chemical plants and construction.