Bionic Elephant's Trunk, Manta Rays and Jelly Fish

Zothecula writes "Festo, the automation company that designed the bionic penguin and its robotic stablemates – AirRay, AquaRay, AirJelly and AquaJelly – has found another natural model in its latest application of biomimicry – the elephant's trunk. Festo's Bionic Learning Network research program focuses on mechatronic and bionic concepts using nature as a model. 'The AquaJelly is possibly the most interesting of all the bionic creatures as it has been designed to autonomously emulate swarming behavior of wild jellyfish. Like the others, it consists of an electric drive unit and intelligent adaptive mechanism, but with a control board housed by a translucent dome, a water-tight body and eight tentacles. The control board has pressure, light and radio sensors that work with eight blue and eight white LEDs allowing communication between the AquaJellies.'"

Comments

!bionic

[geekmansworld]

Sorry to be the stickler, but someone needs to look at their dictionary. "Bionic" (a portmanteau of "bio" and "electronic") is a pretty much a synonym for cybernetic. This story is about biomimicry, not bionics.

Carry on. :-)

Re:!bionic

[Amorymeltzer]

Actually, the word comes from bio- and -ic, which means "like" or "akin to." Bionic is really just a synonym for mimicry, although its usage in medicine is not necessarily the same.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bionic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionics

Re:Pictures?

[Golden_Rider]

here you go, movie:

http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/11082_11090.htm

It needn't be a little penguin

[RevWaldo]

It can be the biggest penguin you've ever seen! An electric penguin, twenty feet high, with long green tentacles that sting people!

.

Re:Pictures?

[Golden_Rider]

then you might find these interesting:

http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/9772_10378.htm#id_10378
http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/9786_10401.htm#id_10401