biomimicry

At Carnegie Mellon, those masters-of-the-robo-universe have a dedicated lab for studying snake locomotion and applying it to robots that can swim, climb telephone poles and wriggle up walls.

A few years from now, bird-watchers may be in for a double take: that flapping creature in the distance? Nope, not a bird. Mutant dragon fly? Nope--it's Darpa's latest unmanned aerial robo-sentinel, inspired by the flight mechanics of birds.

Even though a jellyfish is 90 percent water, it moves at about 40 mph. Jellyfish use their bell -- the top portion, above the tentacles -- to create a jet that propels them through water. Now, scientists at the Chonnam National University in the Republic of Korea have built a robot that mimics the movement. The robot, using an electro-active polymer artificial muscle, retracts and expands its skirt, exerting a minimal voltage and propelling the jellybot faster than you can swim.

Movie courtesy of David Lentink

With the help of a two-foot-wide robotic fly, a vat of oil, and some tricks with smoke and lasers, an aerospace engineer has learned that Mother Nature figured out long ago the most efficient way to fly. Well, at least if you're really small.

Rotation of microspheres in a vertically changing external magnetic field. The color is switched between on (blue) and off states. Video courtesy Yin lab, UC Riverside

In the future, signs will be instantly rewritable and walls will change color at the flip of a switch. A research team at the University of California at Riverside has created a new magnetically activated, instantly and reversibly color-changing material with potentially groundbreaking applications. The technology is based on that used by colorful birds, beetles, and butterflies: instead of static pigments, the material employs "structural color," which depends on the interference effects of light.

The Israel Defense Forces are preparing to deploy a camouflage-wearing, camera-toting robot snake. The spybot, which slithers through cracks and caves using principles of motion derived from those of actual snakes, is just one of roboticist Amir Shapiro's clever designs based on animal physiology. We visited Dr. Shapiro's lab at Ben Gurion University of the Negev to get a closer look.