The spherical Jollbot doesn't resemble a grasshopper, but it owes its ability to jump to these tiny creatures. Insects don't have the muscle action to hop like kangaroos, so they store energy like a compressed spring and release it suddenly to leap. Likewise, when the flexible Jollbot is flattened and then released, it bounds upward roughly 20 inches (50 centimeters) into the air.

Jollbot is an example of a biomimetic machine—one that borrows ideas from nature as inspiration for its appearance, behavior and physical mechanisms. Biomimicry, or biomimetic design, is nothing new (think: Leonardo da Vinci's gliders based on bird wings). But engineers and roboticists are now "proactively looking toward nature for solutions to specific engineering issues," says Jollbot's designer, Rhodri Armour, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering at the University of Bath in England.

Armour, who did his doctoral work at Bath's Center for Biomimetic and Natural Technologies (created in 2003), sought a mechanism that would allow a bot to explore rough environments, which hinder walking and wheeled devices. After four years and three versions of the machine, he unveiled Jollbot in December. In addition to jumping, when it's beach ball–like body is fully extended and taut, the device can roll along bumpy terrain. Picture it on Mars, where a robot like Jollbot could roll and bounce over areas that wheel and tread-based NASA rovers could not.

Over the past decade, biomimetic design has thrived, according to Mark Cutkosky, co-director of Stanford University's Center for Design Research. Biologists have better tools—such as advanced microscopy for viewing things on the scale of thousandths of nanometers—that allow them to learn more about animals and their physical mechanisms, he says. Ronald Arkin, a Georgia Institute of Technology roboticist, notes a dramatic drop in costs of building robots for his research: Making a bot now costs around $1,000 per unit, rather than $30,000.

Meanwhile, new technologies allow engineers to dream beyond designing glorified mechanical arms: So-called "swarm bots" work together like army ants to move relatively heavy objects; a fire hose–cum-snake robot can slither across the floor before putting out a blaze; and Nissan is developing an avoidance system to prevent car crashes based on bees—which use their compound eyes to see nearly all the way around themselves while buzzing about, changing direction when they sense something in their path.

4 Comments

1. 1. eco-steve 06:00 PM 3/23/09

   Perhaps we should start robots evolving by teaching them how to breed, sexually, of course, to ensure hybridation.

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2. 2. Weir 04:25 AM 3/24/09

   The human body has a proprioceptive nervous system that tells the relative orientation of the bodys truck and limb segments in space. Muscles throughout the body have neuromuscular spindles in them that have an independent motor supply. They can be activated independently of the parent muscle to simulate an action before it is performed and generate propriceptive sensory feedback accordingly. This proprioceptive sensory feedback anticipates a future course of action. It is reconciled with direct sensory input that the body responds to according to prior conditioned responses. These two modes of behaviour, one driven causally from the past and the other anticipating a future together determine our physical actions. It is possible to design a robot that can also anticipate a future course of action and function along the same lines as a human body. See the website article on Robotics at www.cosmic-mindreach.com.

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3. 3. Pictosurial 09:17 PM 3/25/09

   In a more than speculative distant future where robots and androids are everyday phenomena and the symbiosis between man and machine is indistinguishable, the most advanced Android of its time will be created as an Art project by an original Hu who's genetic code remained unmodified by modern science and exemplified by the only true original Human language, Art... The Paranoid Android will be thought mad because it reveals concrete irrational aspects of human and machine life never before brought to light in such manner... A line will be drawn and for the first time in the know history of man or machine, the truth about corporealism will be exposed and the blueprints to the sacred planes of infinite light and bottomless darkness will become the Scientific and Artistic phenomena of the aeons... Or something miming this...

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4. 4. zygbot 01:01 AM 4/23/09

   These points have significant implications and applications to the field of humanoid technologies, in which the signal focus is on building robots that can replicate human actions. In fact, major developments in humanoid robotics in the next several decades will depend upon a fundamental breakthrough in the merging together of biological and electro-mechanical systems to achieve new advances in the replication of human motion and cognition. Other fields such as neurobioengineering and neuromorphic engineering are also closely aligned with the aims of biomimetics and play a crucial role in ongoing research efforts to build sophisticated machines that can mimic human like actions. See http://www.zygbotics.com/2009/04/22/biomimetics-is-the-new-robotics/

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