locomotion tagged posts

This robot can swim under the sand and dig itself out too, thanks to two front limbs that mimic the oversized flippers of turtle hatchlings.

It’s the only robot that is able to travel in sand at a depth of 5 inches. It can also travel at a speed of 1.2 millimeters per second-roughly 4 meters, or 13 feet, per hour. This may seem slow but is comparable to other subterranean animals like worms and clams. The robot is equipped with force sensors at the end of its limbs that allow it to detect obstacles while in motion. It can operate untethered and be controlled via WiFi.

Robots that can move through sand face significant challenges like dealing with higher forces than robots that move in air or...

This schematic shows the concept behind the team’s plant-inspired microrobot. Credit: Image courtesy of American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics

The future of bio-inspired engineering or robotics will greatly benefit from lessons learned from plants eg tiny robots powered exclusively by changes in humidity. To generate motion, plants and some seeds – such as mimosa leaves, Venus flytraps and pine cones – simply harness the supply or deprival of water from plant tissues.

“Some seeds consist of a head that contains all its genetic information, along with a long appendage called an ‘awn’ that is responsible for locomotion – just like an animal’s sperm,” explained Prof Ho-Young Kim...

Walking on water might sound supernatural, but in fact it is a quite natural phenomenon. Many small creatures use water’s surface tension to maneuver around. One of the most complex maneuvers, jumping on water, is achieved by a species of semi-aquatic insects called water striders that not only skim along water’s surface but also generate enough upward thrust with their legs to launch themselves airborne from it.

Now, emulating this natural form of water-based locomotion, an international team of scientists from Seoul National University (SNU), Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has unveiled a novel robotic insect that can jump off of water’s surface...