Watch a Tiny Robot Bird Take Off From the Back of a Robot Cockroach

The Berkeley Biomimetic Lab is building some pretty crazy little bots. They've got the X2-VelociRoACH, which can scurry along most terrains at speeds up to 16 feet per second. They've also got the H2Bird, which flies like a bird into the air. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before someone got the brilliant idea to combine the two into an amazing Megazord robot.

First, the researchers put the H2Bird on the back of the VelociRoACH, then had the roach get a running start. The bird can then fly off from the platform the roach provides. What it creates, in effect, is a two step-robotic explorer able to tackle the ground and the air.

The combination could be perfect for search and rescue robots. It's also similar to concepts for spacecraft that have both a rover and an aircraft component (such as the Mars Helicopter or the Titan Aerial Daughtercraft) so they could go anywhere on the surface of another world. We just know we want to play with this combo:

Source: Gizmodo