You might remember RoboBee, an insect-sized robot that flies by flapping its wings. Unfortunately, though, it has to be hard-wired to a power source. Well, one of RoboBee's creators has now helped develop RoboFly, which flies without a tether.
Continue Reading
There are an ever-increasing number of wireless mobile devices transmitting and receiving data, even though there's only a limited amount of bandwidth available to them. In order to keep their signals from jamming one another, scientists have replicated a system used by a cave fish.
Continue Reading
The transparent sections of the glasswing butterfly's wings barely reflect any light, which is why we've previously heard about them inspiring glare-free device screens. Now, their antireflective quality has led to an improvement in a glaucoma-monitoring eye implant.
Continue Reading
Although we've seen robotic fish designed to unobtrusively study marine life, scientists more often use remote-operated vehicles with noisy propellers that scare animals. That could eventually change, however, thanks to the development of a totally silent, transparent, soft-bodied robotic eel.
Continue Reading
In a way, our options are pretty limited when it comes to finding our way around the ocean. But scientists are claiming a new breakthrough in the world of underwater navigation, taking inspiration from marine animals that use polarizing light in some clever ways.
Continue Reading
Festo, the German electrical automation company that previously brought us a robotic dragonfly, kangaroo and penguin, is back with a couple of new creations – a spider that can roll like a wheel, and a bat that flies by autopilot.
Continue Reading
Robots disguised as animals have come to provide us with unprecedented insights into the natural world. Now scientists have developed a robotic fish that can swim just like a real one, allowing them to get up close and personal as a way of studying marine life.
Continue Reading
You may think that a sheet of plain paper is already pretty white, but scientists from the University of Cambridge have created an eco-friendly material that's reportedly 20 times whiter. In order to do so, they copied the scales of a Southeast Asian beetle.
Continue Reading
Though inspired by the snake, a new soft robot out of Harvard takes cues from another source: the Japanese paper craft kirigami. Unlike origami, kirigami uses cuts rather than folds. Here, the Harvard team have applied the artform to create a soft robot that grips the ground much like a snake.
Continue Reading
Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have used a new technique to produce detailed images of dragonfly wings, showing more than 10 billion tiny 'fingers' (nanostructures) lining the wing surface that make bacteria tear themselves apart.
Continue Reading
See the stories that matter in your inbox every morning