bio-inspired

Sea creatures inspire marine robots which can operate in extra-terrestrial oceans

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RoboSalps in action. Credits: Valentina Lo Gatto These robotic units called RoboSalps, after their animal namesakes, have been engineered to operate in unknown and extreme environments such as extra-terrestrial oceans. Although salps resemble jellyfish with their semi-transparent barrel-shaped bodies, they belong to the family of Tunicata and have a complex life cycle, changing between solitary …

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Bees’ ‘waggle dance’ may revolutionize how robots talk to each other in disaster zones

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Image credit: rtbilder / Shutterstock.com By Conn Hastings, science writer Honeybees use a sophisticated dance to tell their sisters about the location of nearby flowers. This phenomenon forms the inspiration for a form of robot-robot communication that does not rely on digital networks. A recent study presents a simple technique whereby robots view and interpret …

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Radhika Nagpal at #NeurIPS2021: the collective intelligence of army ants

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The 35th conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS2021) featured eight invited talks. In this post, we give a flavour of the final presentation. The collective intelligence of army ants, and the robots they inspire Radhika Nagpal Radhika’s research focusses on collective intelligence, with the overarching goal being to understand how large groups of individuals, …

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Team builds first living robots that can reproduce

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AI-designed (C-shaped) organisms push loose stem cells (white) into piles as they move through their environment. Credit: Douglas Blackiston and Sam Kriegman By Joshua Brown, University of Vermont Communications To persist, life must reproduce. Over billions of years, organisms have evolved many ways of replicating, from budding plants to sexual animals to invading viruses. Now …

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Fish fins are teaching us the secret to flexible robots and new shape-changing materials

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By Francois Barthelat Flying fish use their fins both to swim and glide through the air. Smithsonian Institution/Flickr The big idea Segmented hinges in the long, thin bones of fish fins are critical to the incredible mechanical properties of fins, and this design could inspire improved underwater propulsion systems, new robotic materials and even new …

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We used peanuts and a climbing wall to learn how squirrels judge their leaps so successfully – and how their skills could inspire more nimble robots

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How do they stick their landings? Alex Turton via Getty Images Tree squirrels are the Olympic divers of the rodent world, leaping gracefully among branches and structures high above the ground. And as with human divers, a squirrel’s success in this competition requires both physical strength and mental adaptability. The Jacobs lab studies cognition in …

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Sniffy Bug: a fully autonomous swarm of gas-seeking nano quadcopters in cluttered environments

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Tiny drones are ideal candidates for fully autonomous jobs that are too dangerous or time-consuming for humans. A commonly shared dream by engineers and fire & rescue services, would be to have swarms of such drones help in search-and-rescue scenarios [1], for instance to localize gas leaks without endangering human lives. Tiny drones are ideal …

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Fish-inspired soft robot survives a trip to the deepest part of the ocean

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The deepest regions of the oceans still remain one of the least explored areas on Earth, despite their considerable scientific interest and the richness of lifeforms inhabiting them. Two reasons for this are the low temperatures and enormous pressures exerted at such depths, which require the exploration equipment be carefully shielded inside high-strength metal or …

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Researchers introduce a new generation of tiny, agile drones

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Insects’ remarkable acrobatic traits help them navigate the aerial world, with all of its wind gusts, obstacles, and general uncertainty. Image: courtesy of Kevin Yufeng Chen By Daniel Ackerman If you’ve ever swatted a mosquito away from your face, only to have it return again (and again and again), you know that insects can be …

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Soft robots for ocean exploration and offshore operations: A perspective

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Most of the ocean is unknown. Yet we know that the most challenging environments on the planet reside in it. Understanding the ocean in its totality is a key component for the sustainable development of human activities and for the mitigation of climate change, as proclaimed by the United Nations. We are glad to share …

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