Building a better bot sometimes means looking outside the shop for inspiration. Borrowing from the characteristics and abilities of insects, birds, fish and mammals, scientists and engineers have designed robots that can swim, jump, snuggle, and steal books.
Some guy in Japan even built an 11-meter-long, smoke-blowing contraption inspired by a rhinoceros beetle.
Here are a few of the most awesome and most terrifying biomimetic robots around.
Spiderbot
Inspiration: Arachnids
What's Cool About It: Wearable, personal space defending, anti-creep device.
Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht and Austrian software developer Daniel Schatzmayr have taken shoulder pads to a new extreme with The Robotic Spider Dress. Much to our delight, this biomimetic fashion statement crawled onto the catwalk earlier this year. With its combination of sensors and animated legs, the dress protects wearers from objects that might get too close. Don't mess with this dress, people.
Video: Anouk Wipprecht/YouTube
Robo-Ants
Inspiration: Argentine ants
What's Cool About It: Pathfinding bots that learn from one another.
Each of these ant-mimicking robots is named Alice – and the colony of the sugar cube-size machines is called "The Alices." Together, the roboants work to find and learn the most efficient path through an obstacle course – much as real ants do, when they're on the move.
As described in March in PLOS Computational Biology, the Alices use light (instead of chemical pheromones) to mark their route. Light-detecting antennae search for the illuminated botsteps of previous Alices, which leave a blazing trail through the maze. As more and more bots travel the same road, it becomes brighter and brighter, eventually helping direct the entire colony from point Ant to point Bot.
Video: NewsInWorldNow/YouTube
Hummingbot
Inspiration: Hummingbird
What's Cool About It: Slightly sinister.
Equipped with a video camera, this remote-controlled spybot is an accomplished hummingbird impostor. Agile and weighing about as much as a AA battery, the robot-in-disguise can fly, hover, and maneuver like a real hummingbird. Which is all good, except that hummingbirds aren't found much outside the Americas – which means that this DARPA-sponsored creation might stand out in more than a few places.
Developed by AeroVironment. Video: theworacle/YouTube
Caterbotter
What's Cool About It: Rolls into a ball and escapes robot-haters.
Inspiration: Ballistic caterpillars
When threatened, some caterpillars will snap themselves into a wheel shape and roll away at astonishing speeds. For whatever reason, scientists from Tufts University decided to create a robot that could mimic the ballistic rolling action of these caterpillars.
We're glad they did. Made from pliant silicon rubber studded with shape memory coils, the 10-centimeter-long soft-bodied robot, called GoQBot, can curl into a ball and charge away in less than 100 milliseconds.
Zoom, zoom!
Video: InstituteofPhysics/YouTube
Bot Pack
Inspiration: Dogs, and a mule.
What's Terrifying About It: Listening, following, cinder block-chucking.
In an earlier incarnation, headless BigDog the RoboMule merely stomped around, able to carry 340 pounds over rough terrain, uphill, going 4 miles per hour.
Then Boston Dynamics added a little bit of sinister bling: A fifth arm (head) that can throw stuff. Like, cinder blocks and stuff. How convenient.
But there are more members in the pack. AlphaDog can carry 400 pounds for 20 miles, and can even stand up after lying down.
Rat-Bot
Inspiration: Rats.
What's Cool About It: Whisker-guided and adorable.
Instead of cameras, robo-rat uses its whiskers to navigate in the dark, much as real rats do. Moving back and forth at five times per second, the faux whiskers tell the robot – called SCRATCHbot – when it's approaching objects. Developed by a team at the Bristol Robotics Lab, the tailless rat is really rather adorable for a bright yellow metal version of a rodent.
Video: BristolRoboticsLab/YouTube