I’m a huge fan of horror but I’m also the kind of person to run away if things start to move around on their own so the idea of my phone moving on its own towards a charging pad gives me the creeps. Nope.
Is it convenient? Yeah, sure there’s that. If we’re too lazy to move to charge our phones the normal way with the cables then getting up to put our phone down on a charging pad won’t be any different.
In my previous post, I talked about how long-range wireless charging has helped made our lives easier but CaseCrawler is really taking it to the next level. Thanks to roboticists from the Biorobotics Laboratory at Seoul National University in South Korea, they developed a phone case that lets your phone crawl on its own towards a charging pad. Imagine being half-asleep and seeing that.
The thing has legs! Each robotic leg has a knee joint and allows the legs to move the same way as ours. A linkage (attached to a motor through a gearbox) pushes the leg back against the ground to move the robot forward, as the knee joint keeps the leg straight and when not in use, it folds away neatly, flushing against the case itself.
In its early stages of development, the case is very thick, maybe too thick to be a practical phone case but it will give your phone that extra protection though. The CaseCrawler measures in at 24mm thick, but that’s without the motor housing. It weighs 82g on its own, but will be able to carry a phone that weighs 300g and still be capable of movement.
As it is now, the CaseCrawler is more robot than phone case, and moves in quite the creepy manner to boot. You think? Here’s what it looks like moving:
The researchers are still looking into ways to make it smaller, and give it more autonomy and part of what they’re looking into is for it to use the battery power and sensors of the phone it is attached to.
Would I personally be interested in buying this after it’s released? Probably not. But maybe some of you might appreciate it for what it is. It’ll definitely make our lives easier, I’ll admit that but I’d rather not get scared in the process.
Would you buy this?
