News Excerpt:
A new innovative plant-inspired robot, named FiloBot, has been developed that climbs up structures just like climbing vines.
About the news:
- This new innovation team utilizes a combination of plant behaviours like phototropism, negative phototropism and gravitropism and utilizes these naturally occurring behaviours in high-tech robots.
- In biology, tropism is a phenomenon indicating the growth or turning movement of an organism, usually a plant, in response to an external environmental stimulus.
- The tests for FiloBot have been successful and displayed remarkable adaptability that adjusts its growth trajectory dynamically in response to moving light intensity.
About FiloBot: Nature-inspired robot that can revolutionise robotics:
- FiloBot is different from conventional climbing robots as it doesn’t depend on pre-programmed movements.
- It instead absorbs 3D printing filament through its head and extends its length over time, just like a creeper.
- This new innovation has opened a new potential impact of technology that can be applied in robotics, where adaptability and responsiveness redefine the capabilities of climbing robots.
- All these developments in plant-inspired and snake-like robots are significant steps in robotics that are inspired by nature and developed in labs.
Other innovations and their significance:
- Similar innovation led at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where the team has been working on developing snake-like robots that can be utilised in medical surgeries.
- These robots are designed to be slender, flexible and extensible hands that could enable doctors to access difficult-to-reach places within the human body, offering a significant advancement in medical procedures.
- If these robots are developed to their full potential, they can revolutionize the medical field by navigating intricate paths around vital tissues, making previously inoperable cases feasible.
- The development extends to semi-autonomous models, which, guided by surgeons, could use sensors to avoid obstacles, enhancing the precision and safety of surgeries.
- A similar snake-like robot was unveiled by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which was specifically crafted to work on rough terrains of our solar system’s planets and moons.
- The robot named Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS 1.0) is engineered to navigate diverse landscapes, including ice, sand, cliff walls, deep craters and lava tubes.
Conclusion:
Hence, by equipping autonomous systems with transportable additive manufacturing techniques merged with bio-inspired behavioural strategies, future robots can navigate unstructured and dynamic environments and even be capable of self-building infrastructure.
