Since the whole Velcro thing is kind of cheating if you're trying to design a robot inspired by animals (as opposed to plants), the Berkeley researchers have started to develop designs for both active and passive bio-inspired claws. Sure it could:ĭASH, unlike cockroaches or geckos (or CLASH, for that matter), doesn't come with claws, so the researchers "simulated claw action" by sticking some Velcro onto DASH's front and hind legs, and then adding more Velcro to the top and underside of the ledge to form pivot and catch points. Next, Full's group teamed up with roboticists from Berkeley's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab to see if DASH could be taught to do the same sort of thing. Research trip at the Wildlife Reserves near Singapore, the researchers discovered a similar behavior in lizards and documented geckos using this technique in the jungle to escape predators and nosy scientists. Recently, researchers at UC Berkeley's PolyPEDAL Lab, led by Professor Robert Full, demonstrated that cockroaches can perform "rapid inversions" on a ledge, a previously unknown behavior. We've only recently been able to take advantage of technologies that allow for the creation of robots at similar scales, and such robots (like DASH) exhibit impressive speed and agility. These abilities stem in great part from the fact that cockroaches and geckos are small and light, and consequently don't have to overcome much inertia when changing direction. And if you've ever tried to chase down a gecko (and seriously, who hasn't), you know that they're not just fast, but they're also incredibly agile. This replicates behaviors in cockroaches and geckos, and may lead to a new generation of acrobatically-inclined insectobots.Ĭockroaches have a notorious (and much hated) ability to vanish from sight before your brain even decides you should take a swat at it. Uh, don't geckos eat cockroaches? Photo: Jean-Michel Mongeau, Ardian Jusufi, and Pauline Jennings (UC Berkeley PolyPEDAL Lab)ĭASH, UC Berkeley's 10-centimeter long, 16-gram Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod, has learned a new trick: the robot can now perform "rapid inversion" maneuvers, dashing up to a ledge and then swinging itself around to end up underneath the ledge and upside-down.
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