biomimesis

Sometimes it’s just not worth it to try to top Mother Nature. Such seems to have been the judgment by engineers at the University of Washington, who, deploring the absence of chemical sensors as

As capable as robots are, the original animals after which they tend to be designed are always much, much better. That's partly because it's difficult to learn how to walk like a dog directly from a d

Drones are useful in countless ways, but that usefulness is often limited by the time they can stay in the air. Shouldn't drones be able to take a load off too? With these special claws attached, they

If you wanted to see in the dark, you could do worse than follow the example of moths, which have of course made something of a specialty of it. That, at least, is what NASA researchers did when desig

For years roboticists have been looking into using softer materials for parts rather than the usual metal and plastic — sometimes even building entirely soft robots. But this Octobot from Harvard is

The mad roboticists at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have produced another biomimetic mechanoid — this one based on the lithe locomotion of the salamander. "Pleurobot" imitates the