This Hypnotic Video of a Snake Race Tells Us Something About Physics
In this video, snakes are forced to slither between two boards. The boards are placed successively closer together until the poor snake is wriggling. But this isn’t about annoying a snake—it’s about physics.
Tiny Dancing Spider Crickets Could Lead to Better Robotics
Spider crickets are masters of aerodynamics. They don’t have wings, but they can jump up to 60 times their body length — equivalent to a human track star jumping the length of a football field. Now a team of engineering students at Johns Hopkins University has videotaped the critters in slow motion and discovered some…
Unlocking the fractal patterns in cauliflower
Cauliflower are awesome. In addition to being straight up delicious, the pattern of bumps and nobs on its surfaces follow a fractal pattern. While it's most obvious with Romanesco broccoli, it's also present in the standard white stuff. And now, thanks to a new scientific paper, we have the formula behind it.
Why hello, it's a robotic manta ray
Behold Dr. Hilary Bart-Smith of the University of Virginia's Mantabot, a silicone-winged machine based on the the cow-nosed ray, an eagle ray found off of North America's Atlantic coast. It may lack the grace of the extraterrestrials from The Abyss, but it's a robotic manta ray — hard to be churlish in that…
10 Ridiculously Unsettling Old-Timey Robots
Nowadays everyone hems and haws about the uncanny valley, but we don't realize how good we have it in the 21st century. Decades ago, anthropomorphic machines and animal-like automata straddled the line between goofy and "I did not sign up for this." Here's some irrefutable proof that machines have been planning our…
Harvard University has invented a robot facehugger
Remember Ant-Roach, the inflatable robot that looked like the lovechild of a dildo and a wildebeest? Roboticists at Harvard have constructed an even weirder biomimetic balloon. This soft robot, which was developed by Harvard's Whiteside Research Group, takes its cues from pliable fauna like squid, starfish, and…
Ant-Roach, a 15-foot-long inflatable insect robot that you can ride
Meet Ant-Roach, Otherlab's pneumatic robot that weights 70 pounds and can support 1000 pounds of weight. It's not the most mobile vehicle out there, but when's the last time you were able to deflate a golf cart? Otherlab is also working on other "pneubotic" devices, like prosthetic arms that can lift several hundred…
You Will Soon Be Watched Underwater by a Robotic Tuna
When you think of autonomous, unmanned spy vehicles, you probably imagine the telltale shape of a small aircraft overhead, and the suspicious sound of whirring propellers. Spy vehicles, however, aren't just for the sky anymore. The U.S. Navy has funded the development of an autonomous, unmanned vehicle shaped like a…
This Lizard Drinks Through Its Foot, and Soon You Will Too
This mind-bendingly cute thorny devil lizard is one of the most sought-after creatures in the engineering world because it has a special talent: drinking through its foot. Using cracks in its scales, this little guy can wick water up through its foot into its body. Materials scientists hope that by studying how the…