Before I took him out I was asked by a local school teacher if I could bring Strider into her class. Her students were discussing the MER Robots that just landed on Mars and they were building their own ideas out of candy...yum!

Okay, here is Strider at the top of a mound of dirt that is about 5 feet tall. It took forever to navigate up there but he finally did it.

And here you can see the tire tracks in the soft sand. Notice the well defined imprints. This shows that there was very little wheel slip as Strider traversed it. I stopped Strider at this point because the sand on the side of the hill was starting to give way.

Here is the front of Strider in the same place as the picture above.

Even as well as Strider can handle rough terrain he still gets stuck and sometimes even rolls over backwards if the incline is too great. Here I am giving him a hand after his wheel started digging into the soft sand near the top of the hill.

Okay, this has got to be my new favorite picture of Strider. I had him reach down and pick up a pine cone that I had placed there to see if he could pick up something while twisted and contorted.

Here is a video clip of Strider climing down the side of one of the hills, running around on the ground, and then reaching down to pick up a pine cone to take it elsewhere.

Clip is 6.2 Megs

And here is somewhat of a continuation of the clip above with Strider running through the soft sand and dirt.

Clip is 4.3 Megs

Let it not be said that Strider is afraid of getting his tires dirty. We had a little rain last night and I took him out to play in the mud to see how he would handle. Unfortunately, it was dark outside and I didn't have the digital camera or the camcorder but are some pictures of the aftermath. He went through water and mud that almost completely submerged the wheels but the high ground clearance protected the electronics and the motors didn't seem to be affected at all.