These Clever Wheels Turn Into Tracks And We Can't Stop Watching

When it comes to designing a military vehicle that can tackle rough surfaces, you’re left with a dilemma. It’s hard to beat the go-anywhere ability of tracks, but that setup is limited when it comes to performance on less challenging terrain. You could opt for conventional wheels instead, but if the going gets too tough, you could get stuck. And in a war zone that could be deadly.

However, a team from the lengthily-named Carnegie Mellon University National Robotics Engineering Center (or CMU NREC, an acronym we suspect gets used a lot) has a different philosophy: why not both. What they’ve devised is called the ‘Reconfigurable Wheel Track’ - a “shape-shifting” wheel which in just two seconds morphs into a triangle-shaped track. Stick one at each corner, and you’ll have a vehicle with an incredible breadth of abilities. RWT can even make the transformation on the move.

It’s very early days for the technology, which has been developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. It could be some time before we see it deployed in the field, but for now, we’ll just sit slack-jawed watching that transformation again and again. It’s a little hypnotic.

Via The Drive