biomimicry

Tomorrow’s wind turbines could look like enormous owl wings

Engineers often take inspiration from animal designs because they’re more efficient than machines are. In the case of owl wings, nature has a major advantage over human engineering: owl wings are uncannily quiet. Now, researchers are considering outfitting wind turbines with an upscaled equivalent – if they can figure out how to do it. https://gizmodo.com/darpa-just-obliterated-the-landspeed-record-for-the-fas-5941367…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Nov 25

Digital Fabrication Gone Wild!

Experimentation is a pretty standard part of the creative process, but it usually ends with an “a-ha” moment; once you know what you want to make, the trial and error part of the equation is dunzo. For architect Andrew Kudless, however, R&D is never over; he often pushes his sculptural work so far it accidentally…

Tech News Jordan Kushins Nov 20

Bizarre Furniture Inspired by Animals and Bugs

We love all this creepy/cute furniture inspired by animals and bugs. Some of it gets a little macabre, too. Centipede-like lamps named Nymph and Formiga by Site Specific Design (via Site Specific Design) Estante Vaco (Vaco bookshelf) by Glauco Bernardes and Dennys Tormen (via Dennys Tormen) A pig- and cow-shaped dresser with a goose-shaped rest…

io9 Vincze Miklós Oct 21

Future Windows Could Use a Biomimetic Vascular System to Save Energy

Windows, our source of life-giving sunlight indoors, are a menace to your electrical bill. In the summer, windows bleed cold and in the winter they ooze heat. To save energy, researchers want to give window panes a circulatory system that could pump in cool, liquid relief when they get too hot. In research published in…

Tech News Mario Aguilar Jul 30

How Nature Is Inspiring a New Breed of Robotic Design

Some of our greatest inventors have looked to nature for inspiration. So it’s no coincidence that the earliest known designs for what would eventually become the modern airplane were all based on birds. Or why we may one day have nearly indestructible armor inspired by seahorses. This type of design, called biomimicry, is what’s driving…

Tech News Peter ha Jul 30

Using Super Slow Motion to Study the Biomechanics of Flight

DARPA’s hummingbird drone might be terrifying, but it’s pretty remarkable that we’ve been able to create a bot that mimics that kind of agility. Researchers at Stanford armed with high-speed cameras are studying the minutiae of bird flight frame-by-frame to see if we can’t one day make these bots even nimbler. That’s right, super-slow motion—for…

Tech News Mario Aguilar Jul 3

Buildings Based On Human Bone Structure Could Be the Future of Cities

Biomimicry borrows design solutions from the embedded intelligence within animals’ bodies—chiefly from other species. But occasionally, it also borrows from within the human body. For example, a new study from MIT suggests that buildings of the future could be built with super-strong materials based on the structure of human bones. In a study published yesterday…

Tech News Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan Jun 18

Don’t Get Paranoid, But There Are Now Insect-Sized Flying Robots

Everyone, say hello to RoboBee. RoboBee is inspired by the biology of a fly – otherwise, it’s exactly what it sounds like. And it is amazing. RoboBee is the world’s first controllable, flying, insect-scale robot. At just 80 milligrams, it weighs about as much as a large grain of sand. Needless to say, you can’t…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez May 2

Doctors keep skin grafts in place using parasitic worms

Spiny headed worms are a clingy lot. They’re intestinal parasites with long, cactus-like heads that are perfect for penetrating, and then grabbing hold of, the insides of their host’s digestive organs. Now, bioengineers have co-opted these hanger-ons’ latching mechanisms for something therapeutic: skin grafts. These spiny worms (a.k.a. acanthocephalans, a.k.a. “prickly lil’ hellspawn”) are probably…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Apr 16

A Robotic Snake That Acts Like a Python

Unsatisfied with the crawling, writhing, coiling and climbing abilities of their existing hoard of robotic snakes, members of Carnegie Mellon University’s Biorobotics Laboratory have gone and given their mechanical serpent a brand new talent: the ability to wrap itself in a stranglehold around pretty much anything it’s thrown at. The engineers refer to this behavior,…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Mar 25

Quadcopters now have eagle-like talons to snatch prey — er, objects

Now that BigDog can throw concrete slabs like it’s nobody’s business, it would be a mistake to assume that the humble quadrotor isn’t going through a similar evolution in form and function. Watch as this avian-inspired micro UAV uses its talons to snatch objects like an eagle. To get the quadrotor to do this, engineers…

io9 George Dvorsky Mar 19

This microchip healed itself after being blasted by lasers

Our technologies are becoming more biological with each passing year. And here’s the latest breakthrough: Caltech engineers have developed an integrated computer chip that can learn to heal its own injuries. Typically, microchips feature pathways so specialized that a single fault can render the entire thing inoperative. So, in an effort to overcome this lack…

io9 George Dvorsky Mar 13

What’s creepier than swimming alongside an aquatic snake? A mechanical aquatic snake

When the pending robopocalypse strikes, you may be tempted to seek refuge in the water. Don’t do it — and watch this video to see why. It’s the HiBot ACM-R5 robotic snake, a twirling and swirling amphibious machine developed by Japanese researchers. And what’s just as remarkable (or is that horrifying?) is that it can…

io9 George Dvorsky Nov 27

DARPA just obliterated the landspeed record for the fastest mechanical mammal on Earth

You remember Cheetah, don’t you? Back in March, DARPA released video of the robotic quadruped galloping at speeds of up to 18 miles per hour. At the time, 18 mph was a new record, outstripping the previous one by just shy of five miles per hour. https://gizmodo.com/the-pentagons-robotic-cheetah-is-the-fastest-mechanical-5890576 Now, DARPA has released footage of the latest…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Sep 7

Clog-Free Inkjet Printer Inspired by the Human Eye

“The eye and an ink jet nozzle have a common problem: they must not be allowed to dry while, simultaneously, they must open,” explains Jae Wan Kwon, associate professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Missouri. Kwon, with the help of MU engineering doctoral student Riberet Almieda, solved the problem of the…

Tech News Molly Oswaks Jul 18

How Studying Ant Behavior Can Make Social Networks Better

People who go on social networking sites are often compared to ant colonies — but it may be truer than anyone realizes. A new study from the University of Madrid suggests that the behavior of real-life ants could inspire developers to improve the way these sites function. By constructing an algorithm modeled off the foraging…

io9 George Dvorsky Jun 5

The Pentagon’s robotic cheetah is the fastest mechanical mammal ever built

18 miles an hour may not seem terribly fast, but that’s the new land record for legged machines. This speed was clocked by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) robo-cheetah project, which is investigating technologies that allow machines to traverse terrain in new unique ways. Explains DARPA of this metal cat: The “Cheetah” robot…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar Mar 5

Manufacturing a rainbow whose colors never fade

Once again science gets poetic, and colorful. Scientists at the University of Buffalo have found a way to manufacture a structured rainbow that never fades. The bright iridescent colors on a butterfly’s wing never fade. The gold and silver beetles, which have carapaces that shine and reflect like the were sitting on the bumper of…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Feb 24

This butterfly could hold the secret to letting you see in the dark

The opalescent wings of the Morpho butterfly embody a perfect marriage of aesthetic beauty and biological functionality. Scientists believe that a better understanding of this creature’s wings and their chemical makeup could have big implications for imaging technologies like night vision goggles that rely on sensing heat, rather than visible light. Now, a team of…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Feb 15

Waterproof slug robot is like a mechanical amoeba running amok

When we think of futuristic robots, impeccably shiny metal chassis, gleeful tinny voices, and other anthropomorphic accoutrements come to mind. But researchers at Japan’s Chiba Institute of Technology are bucking this trend with the Slug Crawler Vehicle (SCV), a tiny machine enveloped in a tread-like casing designed to protect it from the elements. Watch this…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar Nov 7

Tomorrow’s wind turbines could look like enormous owl wings

Digital Fabrication Gone Wild!

Bizarre Furniture Inspired by Animals and Bugs

Future Windows Could Use a Biomimetic Vascular System to Save Energy

How Nature Is Inspiring a New Breed of Robotic Design

Using Super Slow Motion to Study the Biomechanics of Flight

Buildings Based On Human Bone Structure Could Be the Future of Cities

Don’t Get Paranoid, But There Are Now Insect-Sized Flying Robots

Doctors keep skin grafts in place using parasitic worms

A Robotic Snake That Acts Like a Python

Quadcopters now have eagle-like talons to snatch prey — er, objects

This microchip healed itself after being blasted by lasers

What’s creepier than swimming alongside an aquatic snake? A mechanical aquatic snake

DARPA just obliterated the landspeed record for the fastest mechanical mammal on Earth

Clog-Free Inkjet Printer Inspired by the Human Eye

How Studying Ant Behavior Can Make Social Networks Better

The Pentagon’s robotic cheetah is the fastest mechanical mammal ever built

Manufacturing a rainbow whose colors never fade

This butterfly could hold the secret to letting you see in the dark

Waterproof slug robot is like a mechanical amoeba running amok

Amazon Is Sticking With ‘Rings of Power’ to the End

Trump Is Reportedly Going Full Steam Ahead with the Golden Dome

‘Kamen Rider’ Is Ready to Take on the World

Twitter Just Can’t Stop Leaking Movies

The ‘Mass Effect’ Show is Getting Rewritten to Get Greenlit

See the Early Stages of How ‘Project Hail Mary’ Brought Rocky to Life

‘Cognitive Surrender’ Is a New and Useful Term for How AI Melts Brains

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