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Image Climber

 

The BEAM Bestiary is a BEAM Reference Library site.

The BEAM Family Tree
A quick overview



There are probably dozens of ways to categorize robots in general, and BEAMbots in particular.

What follows is one of them.

This categorization scheme is only slightly modified from that derived by Bruce Robinson in his BEAM Web Index, and essentially groups BEAMbots by whether and how they move:

Sitter

Sits and does something interesting, but with no moving parts

Squirmer

Sits and does something interesting, and the bot moves all or part of its "body" around in some way

Slider

Propelled by selectively sliding body parts or appendages across the ground

Crawler

Propelled by tracks, or by arching the body in a crawling motion; no moving body part slides against the ground while in contact with the ground

Jumper

Propelled by jumping or bouncing ballistically from place to place on the ground

Roller

Propelled by rolling all or part of the body on the ground

Walker

Propelled by legs which lift to make intermittent contact with the ground

Swimmer

Move on or below the surface of a liquid

Flier

Propelled through, and (at least temporarily) supported by the air

Climber

Climbs and / or descends a string, rope, or wire of some kind

The BEAMbots seen to date then fall as follows into those categories (roughly; note that some BEAMbots are "borderline cases," and so I've categorized them as best they seem to fit):

Non-vehicular
Sitter
Squirmer

Beacon

Pummer

Magbot

Flagwaver

Head

Vehicular
Slider
Crawler
Jumper
Roller
Walker
Swimmer (a.k.a. Aquabot)
Flier (a.k.a. Aerobot)

Climber

Snake

Earthworm

Turbot

Inchworm

Tracked

Vibrobot

Springbot

Symet

Solarroller

Popper

Miniball

Walker

Boatbot

Subbot

BEAMplane

BEAMblimp

Climber



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Page authors: Eric Seale and Bruce Robinson
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