Hello, World!

Welcome all to my blogging spot. I've decided to take my obsession with biologically inspired robots and share it with the world.

What is a biologically inspired mechanism or robot? Well, it is anything that moves, operates, or thinks like humans, animals, or nature. Nature has been around for many thousands of years and has gotten pretty good at a lot of things. Birds fly long distances, fish swim to avoid being eaten, and plants grow in little light. These are all examples of nature being faced with a challenge and adapting to the situation. Scientists are problem solvers too.


What is a mechanism or robot? It's any man-made device that moves, operates, or computes. A robot is defined as a "multi-programmable manipulator". This basically means any thing that can be used many time to move or change something else. Mechanisms include aircraft, underwater vehicles, a latch on a car door, or a slingshot.


Scientist can look to nature to solve or improve of the problems they face. Let's look at how an insect flies around your house. An insect can flap it's wing to fly and avoid the walls as it looks for food. The wing is light weight and needs little power to propel it. The insect's brain is very small and requires little "computing power" to control the motion of the wing. These characteristic are very advantageous for designing small unmanned air craft, or UAV. Imagine what more efficient air travel could do for commercial travel.

Using humans, animals, and nature as a foundation for man-made systems is nothing new. In the late 1400's, Leonardo Da Vinci designed many contraption using architecture of humans muscles and tendons. Secretly, he would autopsy corpses to understand how the human body worked. Many of his gliders were based on his observations of bird in flight. Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci

There is a lot of exciting research being conducted in todays labs. I hope to bring you a spattering of exciting new technologies. Many of the new technologies are finding their way into our consumer products. I hope I can be the translator for the "crazy scientific minds" to your technology inspired minds.