Robot Slugs With Claws: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

What would you do if you were going about your daily business, wherever you generally go about your daily business, only to find yourself confronted by a two-foot-long robot slug with claws? Well, after pausing for a moment to try to remember if you heard anything about Skynet going online and achieving self-awareness, it seems the prudent thing to do would be to head in the opposite direction and fast. 

But that's all just speculation, right? Nobody, you tell yourself, would really build a two-foot-long robot slug with claws, would they?

Turns out the answer is "yes."

These clawed robots are, in fact, real and they are the latest creation coming from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University. Inspired by the unique, flexible strength of elephant trunks, the 3D-printed TeCoBots robots are an attempt to work around the  usual rigid constraints of building a robot. The team used an approach called tensegrity, in which the cylindrical rods in the robot’s body are held in place by a web of tensioned cables rather than rigidly locked together. This makes it bendy, like a Slinky, so it can twist and turn around obstacles or collapse down on itself. In testing, a remote human operator was able to use the robot’s bendy body and gripper claws on either of its ends to traverse over a large branch outdoors. It can also roll over itself repeatedly, shimmy up a pipe, and slither like a snake. 

Here's the part where you can breathe a sigh of relief: They aren't equipped with any artificial intelligence (AI), so with any luck, none of these things will go all "Rise of the Machines" on us. They are apparently intended for use underwater, in tight places, and in other places where humans or a humaniform robot can't really go. Watch:

This looks like sci-fi.
A robotic snake designed to live permanently on the ocean floor and operate around subsea infrastructure.
Robots are moving into environments humans were never meant to inhabit.
via @sutoroveli_news#Robotics pic.twitter.com/4IxPvtki6j

— Andres Vilariño 🇪🇦 (@andresvilarino) November 12, 2026

But wait! There's more! Similar, if not precisely the same. And, honestly, to me this speaks more of "snake" than "slug."

This is far from the first weird robot we've seen in recent weeks, but it's the possible combination of these robotic abominations with AI that should worry us. A robot snake with claws is one thing you don't want having a learning AI onboard. This is a thing that could get in all kinds of places that... Well, they don't bear contemplating. Especially when these robo-snakes can merge together, like something out of a 1980s Japanese anime, into one super-snake.

The claws at either end of TeCoBot are fundamental to how it can combine with its fellow slinky-bots. The grippers connect and lock onto each other, reducing the need for other connectors like magnets, which are more prone to mechanical failure. Once connected, each robot can offload certain physical stresses to the others to lighten its load, giving the whole system what the research team refers to as a kind of “embodied intelligence.”

Thanks, but that gives me the heebie-jeebies. 

Here's the thing: We're probably going to see more and more oddball robotics like this, and like the walking hand, and probably more, robots we can't yet imagine — but somebody will, sure as we're standing here.

It's a strange new world we live in. Think on that, and tremble!

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