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Biomimetics or biomimicry is the emulation of the models, systems, and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems. The terms "biomimetics" and "biomimicry" are derived from Ancient Greek: βίος (bios), life, and μίμησις (mīmēsis), imitation, from μιμεῖσθαι (mīmeisthai), to imitate, from μῖμος (mimos), actor. A closely related field is bionics.
Robotic control is the system that contributes to the movement of robots. This involves the mechanical aspects and programmable systems that makes it possible to control robots. Robotics can be controlled by various means including manual, wireless, semi-autonomous, and fully autonomous.
Bionics or biologically inspired engineering is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design engineering systems and modern technology.
Marc Raibert is the Executive Director of the Boston Dynamics AI Institute, a Hyundai Motor Group organization that is focused on solving the most important problems in robotics and artificial intelligence to achieve fundamental advances in the engineering and science of robotics. Raibert was the founder, former CEO, and now Chairman of Boston Dynamics, a robotics company known for creating BigDog, Atlas, Spot, and Handle.
Festo is a German automation company based in Esslingen am Neckar, Germany. Festo produces and sells pneumatic and electrical control systems and drive technology for factories and process automation. Festo Didactic also offers industrial education and consultation services and is one of the sponsors and partners of the WorldSkills Mechatronics Competitions. Sales subsidiaries, distribution centres and factories of Festo are located in 61 countries worldwide. The company was named after its founders Albert Fezer and Gottlieb Stoll.
Bionic Commando, released in Japan as Top Secret is a run and gun platform game released by Capcom in arcades in 1987. It was designed by Tokuro Fujiwara as a successor to his earlier "wire action" platformer Roc'n Rope (1983), building on its grappling hook mechanic; he was also the designer of Commando (1985). The music was composed by Harumi Fujita for the Yamaha YM2151 sound chip.
Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots.
Willow Garage was a robotics research lab and technology incubator devoted to developing hardware and open source software for personal robotics applications. The company was best known for its open source software suite Robot Operating System (ROS), which rapidly become a common, standard tool among robotics researchers upon its initial release in 2010. It was begun in late 2006 by Scott Hassan, who had worked with Larry Page and Sergey Brin to develop the technology that became the Google Search engine. Steve Cousins was the president and CEO. Willow Garage was located in Menlo Park, California.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to robotics:
SmartBird is an autonomous ornithopter created by Festo's Bionic Learning Network with an emphasis on better aerodynamics and maneuverability. It is an ornithopter modeled on the herring gull. It has a mass of 450 grams and a wingspan of 1.96 meters. In April 2011 the SmartBird was unveiled at the Hanover Fair.
A Bernoulli grip uses airflow to adhere to an object without physical contact. Such grippers rely on the Bernoulli airflow principle. While an accelerating, increasing speed, airstream has a low downstream static pressure, the sharp turn from linear to radial flow is the cause of a region of very low pressure around the blower exit hole. This is the cause of a net force on the object in the direction normal to the side with higher local pressure. A Bernoulli gripper takes advantage of this by maintaining this negative pressure at the gripper face compared to the ambient pressure below the sample, while maintaining an air gap between the gripper and the object being held.
DARwIn-OP is a miniature-humanoid robot platform developed and manufactured by Korean robot manufacturer Robotis in collaboration with Virginia Tech, Purdue University, and University of Pennsylvania. It is also supported by a $1.2 million NSF grant. DARwIn-OP has twenty degrees of freedom, each controlled by a DYNAMIXEL MX-28T servo motor.
Ekso Bionics Holdings Inc. is a company that develops and manufactures powered exoskeleton bionic devices that can be strapped on as wearable robots to enhance the strength, mobility, and endurance of industrial workers and people experiencing paralysis and mobility issues after a brain injury, stroke, multiple sclerosis (MS) or spinal cord injury. They enable individuals with any amount of lower extremity weakness, including those who are paralyzed, to stand up and walk.
Bio-inspired robotic locomotion is a fairly new subcategory of bio-inspired design. It is about learning concepts from nature and applying them to the design of real-world engineered systems. More specifically, this field is about making robots that are inspired by biological systems, including Biomimicry. Biomimicry is copying from nature while bio-inspired design is learning from nature and making a mechanism that is simpler and more effective than the system observed in nature. Biomimicry has led to the development of a different branch of robotics called soft robotics. The biological systems have been optimized for specific tasks according to their habitat. However, they are multifunctional and are not designed for only one specific functionality. Bio-inspired robotics is about studying biological systems, and looking for the mechanisms that may solve a problem in the engineering field. The designer should then try to simplify and enhance that mechanism for the specific task of interest. Bio-inspired roboticists are usually interested in biosensors, bioactuators, or biomaterials. Most of the robots have some type of locomotion system. Thus, in this article different modes of animal locomotion and few examples of the corresponding bio-inspired robots are introduced.
Argus retinal prosthesis, also known as a bionic eye, is an electronic retinal implant manufactured by the American company Second Sight Medical Products. It is used as a visual prosthesis to improve the vision of people with severe cases of retinitis pigmentosa. The Argus II version of the system was approved for marketing in the European Union in March 2011, and it received approval in the US in February 2013 under a humanitarian device exemption. The Argus II system costs about US$150,000, excluding the cost of the implantation surgery and training to learn to use the device. Second Sight had its IPO in 2014 and was listed on Nasdaq.
Antonio Bicchi is an Italian scientist interested in robotics and intelligent machines. He is professor at the University of Pisa and senior researcher at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genoa. He is an adjunct professor at the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering of Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, US.
Auke Jan Ijspeert is a Swiss-Dutch roboticist and neuroscientist. He is a professor of biorobotics in the Institute of Bioengineering at EPFL, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and the head of the Biorobotics Laboratory at the School of Engineering.
Alois Christian Knoll is German computer scientist and professor at the TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He is head of the Chair of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Embedded Systems.
Optimus, also known as Tesla Bot, is a general-purpose robotic humanoid under development by Tesla, Inc. It was announced at the company's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Day event on August 19, 2021, and a prototype was shown in 2022. CEO Elon Musk stated in 2022 that he thinks Optimus "has the potential to be more significant than [Tesla's] vehicle business over time."
Necrobotics is the practice of using biotic materials as robotic components. In July 2022, researchers in the Preston Innovation Lab at Rice University in Houston, Texas published a paper in Advanced Science introducing the concept and demonstrating its capability by repurposing dead spiders as robotic grippers and applying pressurized air to activate their gripping arms.
References
- ↑ "Meet the Jumping, Bionic Kangaroo Robot". www.bloomberg.com. Bloomberg News . Retrieved 2015-04-17.
- ↑ Ackerman, Evan (2 Apr 2014). "Festo's Newest Robot Is a Hopping Bionic Kangaroo". spectrum.ieee.org. IEEE Spectrum . Retrieved 17 Apr 2014.
