Rolls Royce is building cockroach like robots and snakes to fix airplane engines

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By Matthew Griffin Robo Revolution 29th July 2018

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

In the future we’ll see more maintenance jobs performed by robots of all sizes.

Typically engineers want to get bugs out of their creations but that’s not the case for Rolls Royce, the engineering company who are building everything from autonomous cargo ships and flying taxis to electric aircraft, who actually want more bugs not less. And they don’t just want a couple of bugs either, they want swarms of them and they want to be crawling all over the inside of the aircraft engines they make looking for and, eventually, fixing problems and doing routine engine maintenance. But these “bugs” they’re referring to aren’t software glitches, they’re tiny robots modelled after cockroaches and snakes that will scamper, “slither” and swarm over every part of the engines.

Rolls Royce created their prototypes with help from robotics experts at Harvard University and University of Nottingham, but even though they’re tiny they’re still too large to get into some of the nooks and crannies of the engines where the company think they’ll be the most useful.

Ultimately Rolls Royce wants to scale their robots down so they’re about half an inch tall and weigh just a few ounces which they think should be possible within the next couple of years, especially as we continue to see breakthroughs in the miniaturisation of everything from nanosized smartphone cameras and displays, which could soon be just atoms thick, and tiny computers that make even grains of rice look like skyscrapers by comparison.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Matthew Griffin, described as a "Walking encyclopaedia of the future" by NASA and a futurist polymath, is one of the world's most renowned futurists and strategic foresight experts. A serial entrepreneur Matthew is the Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm working across the next 50 years, XPotential University, the world's first free futures and foresight university, and the World Futures Forum which works with the United Nations to solve the worlds greatest challenges. 13 times author of the Codex of the Future series, Matthew is an in demand international keynote, acclaimed university lecturer, and host of the hit Fanatical Futurist podcast.

A rare talent in his past Matthew helped build and run several multi-billion dollar business units for Atos, Dell-EMC, and IBM, and his ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders, G7, G20, and G77+ governments, and many of the world's most respected brands including ABB, Accenture, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Dentons, Deloitte, Disney, EY, KPMG, Lego, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Pepsi Co, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, VISA, and many others. He was also the only futurist invited to talk at the UN COP28 held in Dubai alongside world leaders.

Regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, Matthews mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.