Video: Hopping helicopter

One giant leap for probe-kind

REMEMBER Weebles, the toy figures that famously wobbled but never fell down? Well, if you crossed one with a miniature helicopter you’d end up with something like the US army’s forthcoming reconnaissance craft: the hopping rotochute.

This self-righting probe is designed to travel deep into obstacle-ridden spaces such as caves and rubble-laden buildings to video what it finds. It is being developed for the Army Research Lab in Aberdeen, Maryland, by Eric Beyer and Mark Costello, a pair of robotics engineers at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

The army wants this …