Biophysicist Reacts to Animal Inspired Robotics

The Wonders of Biomechanics: A Fascinating Journey Through Nature's Machines

As I watched the videos of engineers trying to replicate the incredible mechanisms found in nature, I couldn't help but feel a sense of awe at the complexity and efficiency of Evolution's designs. From the intricate articulation of an insect's legs to the remarkable ability of a jellyfish to propel itself through the water, each creature has evolved unique solutions to overcome its environment.

The Insect's Legs: A Marvel of Articulation

I looked closely at one video that showed an insect with six legs, and I couldn't help but wonder if it was actually an eight-legged creature. The explanation for this variation in leg number is fascinating - some insects have evolved to use their eighth leg differently than the other six, creating a unique mechanism of movement. The front legs of this insect move together, while the middle legs move in tandem, allowing it to roll itself along like a roly-poly. This remarkable ability would be useless for climbing trees or hunting prey, but it's an efficient way for the insect to move around and navigate its environment.

The Snake: A Master of Constriction

Another video showed me a snake that had evolved to climb trees, using its articulation to wrap itself around branches and then roll itself up like a tight coil. This ability is not unique to snakes - other constrictors also use this mechanism to move through their environment. But what's truly remarkable is the way that these animals have adapted to use their bodies as flexible, articulated limbs, allowing them to climb, crawl, or even walk.

The Dragonfly: A Master of Flight

As I watched a video of a dragonfly in flight, I was struck by its incredible agility and speed. These primitive flies are remarkably similar to modern butterflies, but they have lost one of their wings over time, leaving us with four delicate wings that beat rapidly to create lift. This is an example of how Evolution has efficiently eliminated unnecessary body parts, focusing energy on the most critical features for survival.

The Jellyfish: A Vortex Ring Master

Jellyfish are perhaps some of the most fascinating creatures in the ocean, using their stinging tentacles to catch prey and their remarkable ability to propel themselves through the water. They create a vortex ring that travels down from their bodies, pulling water towards them like a magnet. This powerful current allows jellyfish to move efficiently through the water, making it an efficient way for them to transport themselves from one place to another.

The Optimal Vortex Ring: A Key to Efficient Movement

One of the most remarkable things about jellyfish is their ability to create an "optimal" vortex ring - a particularly powerful and efficient version of this phenomenon. By studying the behavior of jellyfish, engineers are working to replicate this process in robots, using it as a model for creating more efficient propulsion systems.

A New Era of Robotics

Watching these videos has given me a new appreciation for the incredible machines that Nature has created. While modern robotics is capable of amazing feats, it's still far from replicating the intricate mechanisms found in animals. But by studying the biomechanics of Evolution's designs, we can learn valuable lessons about efficiency and effectiveness.

As engineers continue to work on developing robots that mimic nature's machines, I have no doubt that we will make great strides forward. Who knows - maybe one day we'll even be able to strap a camera to a robot jellyfish and capture breathtaking footage of the underwater world from a whole new perspective. The possibilities are endless, and it's clear that Nature has a lot more tricks up its sleeve than we currently know about.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enoh or maybe it's a some kind of constrictor snake oh but it climbs that way too this is remarkable so maybe it's looking for its prey I'm Joy Whitaker I'm a professor at Pomona College I'm a biophysicist who studies plant Dynamics today we're going to be looking at robots that are inspired by animal motion scientists who've watched animals move and now adapted it to our robot technology this looks to me like a scary robotic kangaroo sometimes now people don't like to use the word biomimicry because Engineers don't try to exactly copy biological organisms here however we seem to have something that is very much biomimicry I think it's pretty much the ankle of the kangaroo that's it sort of gives it a lot of its momentum there's actually a pogo sticks that have been made inspired by the same sort of thing so this one looks like it's a Pneumatic robot so pneumatic is using pressurized air to move things back and forth this one rather than being powered by Motors or at least the legs aren't powered by Motors they're powered by pressurized air which I think can actually probably move a little bit faster than a motor at least more sudden bursts of energy and a motor for the tail yes the tail is going to give it the balance by going through these motions and actually trying to reproduce a kangaroo's motion we're going to learn a lot more stuff about the details of how the kangaroo is so effective at jumping high and efficiently and that might Inspire maybe some sort of robots that could go out in different terrains they have basically tried to reach create a kangaroo from scratch a little less cute again they've given us a clue with the face so that looks to me to be a bat okay it's got the hinged Wings right so bat basically is just its wings are just evolved arms remember they're mammals right so it's got all the same articulated joints that we have it has a wrist it has an elbow the fingers are actually the sort of filaments that go down the wing and here you know an evolution was evolving bats from some sort of rodent that was probably a terrestrial rodent all the evolution happened in the arm and what festo has done here is taken the same articulations where you have a shoulder and elbow and a wrist basically with some fingers on the end and attach that to some really cool looking very light membrane and that is not a small bat oh and that looks almost like a flying fox or something so like that I guess it's not even remote control this this thing is flying on its own so clearly we aren't very far from the robot overlords taking us over this looks to be a mini hummingbird that they've created hummingbird Wing motion is just one of the most remarkable things there is most birds will get energy on sort of just one stroke but the hummingbird you can sort of see the wings go back and forth and back and forth and it's getting lift on both the downstroke and the upstroke of its wings one thing that nothing in nature can do as far as we know is rotate around like a helicopter right so we've made drones and things like that that usually use rotating turbines to fly I actually think this is one of the cases where humans might have outdone Evolution Evolution was sort of stuck with limbs that could only move back and forth so the hummingbird has to fly by moving its wings back and forth If evolution could have had a propeller it probably would be more efficient but it's cool to see that Engineers are actually working with the sort of same constraint that hummingbirds have and I'm sure there's some robustness that's going to come out of that and some other reasons that mimicking the hummingbird motion as opposed to just creating another drone is an effective way to find things next up the bionic wheelbot Wheels not common in nature it's very hard to get joints that can just roll continuously and still power themselves so let's see what they've come up with here kind of looks like a spider maybe but I guess not a spider because we have six legs or is there an eighth leg maybe it is an eighth leg and in this case they're looking at different insect Gates Right Where the middle legs move together the front legs move together and then I think it's going to start rolling itself along maybe it's going to be like a roly-poly that's pretty cool I don't know what animals do that but I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't some insects that do curl themselves in a ball and push themselves along with one of their legs and there it goes to take over the world snake maybe I don't know again it's just a whole bunch of articulations and then you'll have some sort of wave that travels down the thing so a worm I guess would travel this way oh or maybe it's a some kind of constrictor snake oh but it climbs that way too this is remarkable all right so not only do we have articulation at each of these things but they can rotate as well so it can wrap itself around a tree and then just sort of roll itself up that's cool and look it has an eye too and it's looking at things so maybe it's looking for its prey I'm guessing this one is bio mimicking some kind of snake but that is a really cool mechanism to climb a tree I'm impressed and I imagine it could even once it gets to branches use its articulation to sort of get out of that branch and climb out so it should be very versatile climber as well okay this looks like a dragonfly to me they are primitive flies and that they have four wings and it's the more advanced flies that have two Wings this is a case where I actually Evolution did actually get rid of a limb this is a pretty remarkable thing and I imagine the tail is there for stability dragonfly is a hunter that hunts other flying objects so a remarkably great flyer and a great thing to mimic if it's like a dragonfly it should be highly or maneuverable and very fast it's even got the eyes there and everything and some articulation at the head that is really cool oh a jellyfish jellyfish are remarkable animals some of the work that's been done on jellyfish shows that as they sort of undulate like this and this thing undulates they actually eject a Vortex ring that moves down a Vortex ring is the same thing that a smoker would make when it blows a smoke ring and it's a really efficient way to move a fluid through another fluid the other thing that a Vortex ring does is as the vortex ring travels down from the jellyfish's body is it tends to pull water in from the surrounding areas and that's perfect for the jellyfish because in that water is usually some of the prey that it preys on so by ejecting a Vortex ring down the jellyfish can become mobile and transport itself from one place to the other but at the same time it's drawing crate right towards its tentacles holy cow so okay this is incredibly light and then filled with helium but again if we're trying to mimic a jellyfish it should be buoyant right jellyfish don't sink I wonder another thing that jellyfish does is it actually creates not just a Vortex ring but a very special Vortex ring it's the one that just powerful enough to make a single Vortex ring it's called an optimal Vortex ring in nature so far all the vortex Rings we've seen formed have been optimal so I'm I'm hoping and imagining that this company that makes this uh remarkable robot is looking at sort of how hard and how frequently to flap its its tentacles to create an optimal Vortex ring which will give you the most propulsion for the little least amount of energy will be the most efficient way to propel yourself way cooler than a drone in my opinion this this would be a really cool way to uh strap a camera to that thing and maybe go and you know film things from above would be pretty cool yeah so that was those are some fantastic videos um I learned a lot by watching them I think hopefully by watching sort of Engineers try to make robots that do what animals can do you can start to really see how remarkable Evolution has has worked to make such magical machines that are the living organisms that are all around us and it's really even the best engineers in the world are only making sort of facsimiles of this that aren't quite the same that are not nearly as as um impressive as an actual jellyfish or an actual kangaroo but as we get in as we learn more and more about the biomechanics and how what the tricks Evolution has come up with we're going to make better and better robots and maybe one day we'll catch up Evolution has a big big head start on us but um this is pretty remarkable stuffoh or maybe it's a some kind of constrictor snake oh but it climbs that way too this is remarkable so maybe it's looking for its prey I'm Joy Whitaker I'm a professor at Pomona College I'm a biophysicist who studies plant Dynamics today we're going to be looking at robots that are inspired by animal motion scientists who've watched animals move and now adapted it to our robot technology this looks to me like a scary robotic kangaroo sometimes now people don't like to use the word biomimicry because Engineers don't try to exactly copy biological organisms here however we seem to have something that is very much biomimicry I think it's pretty much the ankle of the kangaroo that's it sort of gives it a lot of its momentum there's actually a pogo sticks that have been made inspired by the same sort of thing so this one looks like it's a Pneumatic robot so pneumatic is using pressurized air to move things back and forth this one rather than being powered by Motors or at least the legs aren't powered by Motors they're powered by pressurized air which I think can actually probably move a little bit faster than a motor at least more sudden bursts of energy and a motor for the tail yes the tail is going to give it the balance by going through these motions and actually trying to reproduce a kangaroo's motion we're going to learn a lot more stuff about the details of how the kangaroo is so effective at jumping high and efficiently and that might Inspire maybe some sort of robots that could go out in different terrains they have basically tried to reach create a kangaroo from scratch a little less cute again they've given us a clue with the face so that looks to me to be a bat okay it's got the hinged Wings right so bat basically is just its wings are just evolved arms remember they're mammals right so it's got all the same articulated joints that we have it has a wrist it has an elbow the fingers are actually the sort of filaments that go down the wing and here you know an evolution was evolving bats from some sort of rodent that was probably a terrestrial rodent all the evolution happened in the arm and what festo has done here is taken the same articulations where you have a shoulder and elbow and a wrist basically with some fingers on the end and attach that to some really cool looking very light membrane and that is not a small bat oh and that looks almost like a flying fox or something so like that I guess it's not even remote control this this thing is flying on its own so clearly we aren't very far from the robot overlords taking us over this looks to be a mini hummingbird that they've created hummingbird Wing motion is just one of the most remarkable things there is most birds will get energy on sort of just one stroke but the hummingbird you can sort of see the wings go back and forth and back and forth and it's getting lift on both the downstroke and the upstroke of its wings one thing that nothing in nature can do as far as we know is rotate around like a helicopter right so we've made drones and things like that that usually use rotating turbines to fly I actually think this is one of the cases where humans might have outdone Evolution Evolution was sort of stuck with limbs that could only move back and forth so the hummingbird has to fly by moving its wings back and forth If evolution could have had a propeller it probably would be more efficient but it's cool to see that Engineers are actually working with the sort of same constraint that hummingbirds have and I'm sure there's some robustness that's going to come out of that and some other reasons that mimicking the hummingbird motion as opposed to just creating another drone is an effective way to find things next up the bionic wheelbot Wheels not common in nature it's very hard to get joints that can just roll continuously and still power themselves so let's see what they've come up with here kind of looks like a spider maybe but I guess not a spider because we have six legs or is there an eighth leg maybe it is an eighth leg and in this case they're looking at different insect Gates Right Where the middle legs move together the front legs move together and then I think it's going to start rolling itself along maybe it's going to be like a roly-poly that's pretty cool I don't know what animals do that but I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't some insects that do curl themselves in a ball and push themselves along with one of their legs and there it goes to take over the world snake maybe I don't know again it's just a whole bunch of articulations and then you'll have some sort of wave that travels down the thing so a worm I guess would travel this way oh or maybe it's a some kind of constrictor snake oh but it climbs that way too this is remarkable all right so not only do we have articulation at each of these things but they can rotate as well so it can wrap itself around a tree and then just sort of roll itself up that's cool and look it has an eye too and it's looking at things so maybe it's looking for its prey I'm guessing this one is bio mimicking some kind of snake but that is a really cool mechanism to climb a tree I'm impressed and I imagine it could even once it gets to branches use its articulation to sort of get out of that branch and climb out so it should be very versatile climber as well okay this looks like a dragonfly to me they are primitive flies and that they have four wings and it's the more advanced flies that have two Wings this is a case where I actually Evolution did actually get rid of a limb this is a pretty remarkable thing and I imagine the tail is there for stability dragonfly is a hunter that hunts other flying objects so a remarkably great flyer and a great thing to mimic if it's like a dragonfly it should be highly or maneuverable and very fast it's even got the eyes there and everything and some articulation at the head that is really cool oh a jellyfish jellyfish are remarkable animals some of the work that's been done on jellyfish shows that as they sort of undulate like this and this thing undulates they actually eject a Vortex ring that moves down a Vortex ring is the same thing that a smoker would make when it blows a smoke ring and it's a really efficient way to move a fluid through another fluid the other thing that a Vortex ring does is as the vortex ring travels down from the jellyfish's body is it tends to pull water in from the surrounding areas and that's perfect for the jellyfish because in that water is usually some of the prey that it preys on so by ejecting a Vortex ring down the jellyfish can become mobile and transport itself from one place to the other but at the same time it's drawing crate right towards its tentacles holy cow so okay this is incredibly light and then filled with helium but again if we're trying to mimic a jellyfish it should be buoyant right jellyfish don't sink I wonder another thing that jellyfish does is it actually creates not just a Vortex ring but a very special Vortex ring it's the one that just powerful enough to make a single Vortex ring it's called an optimal Vortex ring in nature so far all the vortex Rings we've seen formed have been optimal so I'm I'm hoping and imagining that this company that makes this uh remarkable robot is looking at sort of how hard and how frequently to flap its its tentacles to create an optimal Vortex ring which will give you the most propulsion for the little least amount of energy will be the most efficient way to propel yourself way cooler than a drone in my opinion this this would be a really cool way to uh strap a camera to that thing and maybe go and you know film things from above would be pretty cool yeah so that was those are some fantastic videos um I learned a lot by watching them I think hopefully by watching sort of Engineers try to make robots that do what animals can do you can start to really see how remarkable Evolution has has worked to make such magical machines that are the living organisms that are all around us and it's really even the best engineers in the world are only making sort of facsimiles of this that aren't quite the same that are not nearly as as um impressive as an actual jellyfish or an actual kangaroo but as we get in as we learn more and more about the biomechanics and how what the tricks Evolution has come up with we're going to make better and better robots and maybe one day we'll catch up Evolution has a big big head start on us but um this is pretty remarkable stuff\n"