Technology meets nature: 10 best animal inspired robots

It is a heavily-built robot developed in shape of a horse. The purpose of BigDog is the same of a horse. It can be used to help military traverse rough terrains with heavy bundles including ammunition. This sturdy quadruped robot was built in 2005 by Boston Dynamics in association of the Harvard University Concord Field Station and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The robot is 3 feet long, 2.5 feet tall, and it weighs 240 pounds. BigDog can move 5 miles per hour with a load of 340 pounds. An onboard computer controls BigDog.

COM-BAT is a small six-inch spy plane developed by the Michigan College of Engineering for the U.S military. The robotic surveillance plane is powered by solar, wind, and vibration energy. COM-BAT can be sent to gather information about insurgents in warfronts. The U.S military provided $10 million grant to the Michigan University to develop the miniature surveillance plane.

The insect-inspired walking robot HECTOR is meant for explorations and researches. The entire technology in HECTOR is indeed bio-inspired. The walking robot, developed by researchers at the University of Bielefeld's Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology, has deployed elastic joint drive that makes its movements as muscled animal creatures. Entirely controlled by biologically inspired algorithms and techniques HECTOR really looks like a real-life creature.

A team of Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a snake-like robot. It can move like a desert serpent that can slither and move beneath the sand surface to escape from predators. The snake-like robot is capable to swim through granular material. Researchers have developed the robot inspired by science fiction. In future, an advanced version of the robot is to have the capability to burrow through the debris of an earthquake and other calamities to rescue people, designers of the robot say.

CHEETAH is a cheetah-like quadruped robot from Boston Dynamics. It is developed for military purpose. Boston Dynamics, known for its BigDog, has prepared this big-cat-inspired robot with some great capabilities. The robot in form of the world’s fastest land animal can travel faster than the quickest human athletes. Besides four legs, it has a flexible spine, articulated head and neck. The project was done for DARPA.

Hexapod is a robot in shape of spider. It was developed by Konod, a Japanese Robotic Company. Thanks to its six legs, Hexapod Robotic Spider can move autonomously. Purpose of the robot is not clear. However, it looks amazingly great. The company might have some target with this spider-like robot. But what makes it attractive are its strongly-built body and spider shape.

It is a robot developed in shape of a worm. The University of Leeds researcher Dr. Jordan Boyle has designed this “worm-bot” in form of Caenorhabditis elegans nematode, a tiny free-living worm. Worm-bot can waggle its way around obstacles and move fast. Actually, the robot is 2,000 times larger than its natural counterpart. The worm-bot has a strong backbone made from 12 articulated nylon-based plastic segments, which help it squirm around.

The military research agencies now largely build insect-inspired robots for surveillance and spying. Rather than creating miniature robots for spying, it is fantastic to build something that will not come in the attention of snoopers. The idea of developing insect cyborgs or cybugs has been there for a while. DARPA funds agencies and researchers to develop such robots to leak information without the knowledge of the opposite side.

Festo, known for its exciting fluidic muscles and robotic flying penguins, has designed an elephant trunk shaped Bionic Handling Assistant. The robot is both agile and delicate. It can help people do many hard tasks like animal husbandry. Festo calls its Elephant Trunk robot as a “hierarchically arranged system of muscles and evolutionary optimized movement patterns.” Indeed, the Elephant Trunk robot is another brilliant robotic invention from Festo.

It an eight-legged Scorpion shaped robot from NASA for space explorations. The heavily built robot is employed to test rocks, soil and water in external planets. The robot is with all kinds of sensors and technologies to analyze the situations in the surface of external planets.