Seahorses are majestic but bizarre animate being . Their fundament are peculiar for the animal kingdom as they are unlike those of many other tailed creatures like monkeys , mice and tigers , which all have cylindric tails . Instead , seahorse have tails with a much more angulate shape , as they are hem in with square , bony plates .
mesmerised by this unco square appendage , scientist decided to find out if it could be used to inspire a new generation of robotics . The seahorse , despite being a fish , does n’t use its fanny for swim . rather , it uses it for gripping onto things like seaweed . Since these animals seem to be so adept at cling onto this slippery foliage , scientists think that their alone tail could be an ideal feature to seek to replicate in a robot .
Michael Porter , from theUniversity of California , San Diego , and his colleagues therefore decided to create some computer models to get out how the sea horse ’s tail could be superior to cylindrical tails .
The tail modelled with square home had some enunciate advantage over the model with circular plates . When the orbitual weapon tried to grip something , its photographic plate would skid and rotate , making gripping a chore . The straight arm , on the other script , did not rotate . The square plates only skid over each other , which had substantial morphologic advantages to the round blueprint .
The investigator then 3-D - print their designs to test how they fared after being dead set , squashed and wrench . The square model exceed the round one when crushed : the straight frame absorbed the shock of shock where the circular plate deformed . The straightforward excogitation ’s inbuilt damage aegis is something that has been difficult to achieve in atomic number 14 - based golem , so this tweak in structure could help us to modernize strong , silicon robots .
Researchers find that the tail ’s straight segments create more contact points with the surface that it is grip when compare with a tail with round section . Michael Porter / Clemson University .
The walrus - inspired arse did , however , have some want compared to the round tail . For model , the shape of the square plate restrain the tail end ’s movement to about half of that of the circular plates , making it less versatile . However , when twisted , the square model touch on its bod much faster .
The sea horse - inspire tail has possible practical app of all size of it : scale it up to make a robotic arm or descale it down to make a catheter . Marc Meyers , joint author of the work published in Science , musedthat there are many possible action .
" Human engineer tend to build things that are squiffy so they can be controlled easily,“saidRoss Hatton , another joint author fromOregon State University . " But nature reach things just hard enough not to break , and then flexile enough to do a wide range of tasks . That ’s why we can learn a lot from animals that will inspire the next generations of robotics . "
[ ViaScience Mag ]
