Biomimetic Robots: A Photo Gallery

Roland Piquepaille writes "Once again, technology is imitating nature with a new class of biologically inspired robots called "Biomimetic Robots." In this very long article, IEEE Computer Magazine looks at several projects currently underway. All these projects will have practical applications a few years from now. They include robotic lobsters for underwater mine research or flying insect-based robots for future spatial missions. Other projects are about cricket-inspired robots to be used in rescue missions or scorpion-like robots to be deployed in hostile environments for humans. and of course, there are the now famous and robust "sprawling" robots based on cockroaches. For more information, read the whole very well documented article. Or read this summary for a photo gallery and direct links to all the projects."

Comments

Back Ground information

[Mstrgeek]

Here are some good site with some more information anout this type of robotics hope you enjoy

http://www-cdr.stanford.edu/biomimetics/

http://www.neurotechnology.neu.edu/

http://www.computer.org/computer/homepage/0904/p au lson/r9048.pdf

Above is a PDF with good information

Re:Wow

[luvirini]

You have to remember that in nature we are talking about solutions that have actually been tested to work. So taking general concepts from allready tested things is a good way to shorten your prototyping time.

The only part of robotics that actually has a good set of working solutions is the industrial robots. For all other branches of robotics we are still in quite early stages, where the number or working, let alone good, solutions inside the science is quite low.

Ofcourse in the end robotics is quite different from the source of inspiration, but the basic design decisions have to be based on something.