Home BEAM family tree Sitter Squirmer Slider Crawler Jumper Roller Walker Swimmer Flier 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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