Rolf Mueller of Virginia Tech has been studying bat ears in relation to human ears to see how bats locate the origin of a sound. He has been able to extract ideas from this natural technology to make a device capable of locating sound in a similar way bats do. This […]

Bioinspired hydrogels have promising applications in wearable devices, human health monitoring equipment, and soft robots due to their multifunctional sensing properties which resemble natural skin. In this paper, the researchers designed a bioinspired hydrogel with multiple conductive capabilities by incorporating carbon nanotubes into […]

New robots inspired by marine life are making significant strides in ocean research. Using deep sea creature-like features, they are able to explore where no man has gone before, and explore the deepest depths of our ocean. New technologies are also allowing humans to map the ocean and see what the […]

Bioinspiration is an increasingly popular design paradigm, especially as robots venture out of the laboratory and into the world. Animals are adept at coping with the variability that the world imposes. With advances in scientific tools for understanding biological structures in detail, we are increasingly able to identify design features that […]

The elephant trunk inspired the German company Festo to develop a bionic arm. Called the Bionic Handling Assistant, the free-moving “third hand system,” as Festo calls it, has plenty of uses in situations that require support from machines. That can include medical technology, rehabilitation and as an aid for the handicapped, […]

George Lauder has teamed with Harvard engineers and colleagues from the University of South Carolina to find a bioinspired structure that could improve aerodynamic performance of airplanes, wind turbines, drones, and cars. The study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, looked at sharkskin denticles (thousands and thousands of […]