Insect

Inspired by insects, South Korean researchers have developed a robotic beetle with artificial muscles that allow it to get into tight spaces and grip objects. The coolest part? A human can control it with a flick of a finger – quite literally.

A honey bee’s barbed sting could be among the most sophisticated of venom-delivery systems in the natural world. Despite knowing about this relatively unusual anatomy for more than a century, nobody had ever observed it in action. Until now.

Cyborg cockroaches have got a promotion. Besides finding survivors in earthquake rubble, they’ve become paramedics, delivering emergency medication while human rescuers are on their way.

Engineers used adversarial inverse reinforcement learning to train robots to respond dynamically to uneven terrain and loss of limbs, a training system transferrable to dissimilar robots. And they did so using a stick insect as a role model.

Most of us have learnt that life on land involved transitioning from the water and evolving the physiological means to do so. But a new study has found solid evidence that this formative process involved more diverse species also making the move.

The deadliest animal to ever exist isn’t an apex predator like sharks or lions. Neither is it rats that caused three great plagues. It’s the tiny 5-mm Anopheles mosquito. One company is proposing fighting them with tiny air-to-air killer drones.

What sounds more terrifying than a part-cockroach, part-robot cyborg? Definitely one that can also breathe underwater. Yet, this is exactly what researchers have just created, except they are replacing “terrifying” with “useful.” Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore and Waseda University in Japan have created a soft, flexible diving suit for cyborg cockroaches. The suits are equipped with miniature oxygen generators that allow the cockroaches to survive for up to three hours underwater or in low-oxygen conditions.

Every year, the Natural History Museum in London dazzles wildlife lovers with the best-of-the-best photographs of the natural world. This year is no exception, and we've got a riveting preview for you ahead of October's award ceremony.

Although we've seen many robotic water striders over the years, scientists are still finding new aspects of the insects to replicate. Recently, for instance, researchers created a strider-bot that zips across the water's surface via fans on its feet.

Instead of going to the trouble of building tiny robots from scratch, some scientists are now turning insects into remote-control cyborgs. A new "assembly line" could help, by converting cockroaches into cyborgs far faster than can be done by hand.

I bet that headline wasn't on your bingo card this week. Researchers at the University of Osaka have equipped cyborg insects with teeny tiny helmets to steer them around various environments, without the need for invasive surgery or internal wiring.

Nobody likes hearing a mosquito somewhere in their bedroom, without being able to see where it is. Well, the Bzigo Iris tracks and highlights mozzies, so you can swat them. It's now 50% cheaper, and doesn't require a Wi-Fi connection.