Drawing inspiration from the gecko, researchers from the Simon Fraser University (SFU) have been able to create adhesives that carefully mimic the toe pads of the lizard that give it the amazing ability to climb smooth vertical surfaces. They used those adhesives on belts used by Timeless Belt Climbing Platform (TBCP-II) – a tank-like robot… »
Remaining stable while going over obstacles is fairly tricky for small robots, so the researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, fixed a small robot dubbed DASH (Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod) with lateral and tail wings borrowed from a store-bought toy to see if that would help. Although the wings haven’t enabled the robot to… »
Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) researchers have been inspired by climbing plants to develop a polymer foam surface coating with a closed cell construction capable to reduce the pressure loss after the membrane is damaged. Aside making future inflatable structures more resistant, the technology could provide them with a longer operational… »
Inspired by pitcher plant, a group of applied scientists at Harvard University managed to create a material that repels just about any type of liquid, including blood and oil, and does so even while it is exposed to high pressure or freezing temperatures. Since it is carnivorous by nature, the ability to have a virtually… »
The adhesive surface of gecko’s toes has inspired many research groups to try to mimic this ability in an artificial material. Researchers at the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering and co-workers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore claim that they came up with the closest biomimicry yet, and that their synthetic gecko toe… »
Most of us had the opportunity to play with maple seed and observe it spiraling down after we throw it. Several groups of engineers around the world have been inspired by maple seed and applied biomimicry to construct small flying machines. Lockheed Martin came up with Samarai which was exhibited at the Association for Unmanned… »
A team of researchers from the University of Akron (UA) has observed two species of spiders in order to develop stimuli-resistant and stimuli-sensitive materials. The research shows that the sticky glue that coats the silk threads orb-weaving spiders spin has a different structure, property makeup and response to humidity than glues produced by their evolutionary… »
A researcher from the University of Leeds has drawn inspiration from nature to build a robotic worm that can wiggle its way around obstacles. Dubbed worm-bot, the robot is modeled after the Caenorhabditis elegans nematode – a minuscule free-living worm that uses a very simple nervous system of just over 300 neurons to control the… »
