Scientists at Seoul National University (SNU) have recently created a robot inspired by tiny blood-sucking bugs: fleas! Pesky as these little insects may be, they’ve got an incredible physical ability that not even an Olympic high-jumper could compete with — these guys can jump over 200 hundred times their own body length! See for yourself in NewScientist’s video above.

Not every insect is capable of such an extraordinary feat, so what is it exactly that puts that special spring in every little flea’s step? The muscle is the flea’s upper-leg is endowed with a special protein called resilin. Nerve impulses stimulate the compression and decompression of the stretchy resilin and in coordination with tissue that acts a bit like a latch, the flea’s jump mechanism operates much the way a spring does.

Using a special alloy called nitinol, derived from nickel and titanium, Minkyun Noh and his team at SNU constructed three tiny springs that function much like the flea’s. Embedded into a tiny 2 cm robot, the insect-inspired machine is able to leap about 30 times its own body length.

Currently, this bot relies on an external power source but scientists are trying to figure out a feasible way to get some nano batteries on board. While applications for the bot have yet to be specified, researchers believe this kind of technology could be used in a wide range of fields— from medicine to environment monitoring.

For more information on the design of this robot, you can access the paper HERE

It’s suspected that the earliest forms of cockroaches were present over 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous period while our modern roach’s history dates back to the more recent Cretaceous period, which ended about 65 million years ago. The end of that era demolished the dinosaurs but anyone living in an urban environment knows that the cockroaches managed to survive!

Many of us are repulsed by these little critters but what is it exactly about them that may send shivers down our spines? Some will say they don’t like the way these insects move — they seem to fly down sidewalks, or up walls, able to quickly disappear around corners and bends. It’s long since been stated that the cockroach is one of the most adaptable creatures on earth, but today, scientists are also discovering that what we may find most off-putting about these insects, could be one of their most sophisticated attributes— in fact it seems these bugs can pull off moves that rival Fred Astaire’s!

Researchers from the Biophysics group at the University of California, Berkeley,  stumbled upon an interesting behaviour while they were investigating how roaches use their antenna to cross gaps between a pair of ramps. When the gaps became too large for the insects to cross,  roaches would simply swing themselves right onto the underside of the ramp by grabbing the end of  it with the claws on their hind legs.  Researchers  also discovered that some lizards and geckos use their hook-like toenails to perform a similar pendulum-type swing when trying to escape from potential predators.

As you can see in the video above, there are important ways that this kind of research can be applied to robotics:  “Today, some robots are good at running, some at climbing, but very few are good at both or transitioning from one behavior to the other. That’s really the challenge now in robotics, to produce robots that can transition on complex surfaces and get into dangerous areas that first responders can’t get into,” explains Professor Robert Full, an integrative Biology professor at UC Berkeley.

After working with Full’s group, a UC Berkley robotics group, led by Professor Ron Fearing, modified a six-legged, cockroach-inspired robot named  DASH (Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod)  by placing some Velcro on its rear legs. The adapted machine can now reproduce the insect’s maneuver in very similar fashion but it’s up to you to decide whether it’s the robot or the roach that performs the stealthiest disappearing act!

If you’re interested in research on these kinds of robots, check out Living Machines 2012: The International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems taking place from the 9th-12th of July in Barcelona, Spain.

Back in the 14th century, a man notorious for both his artistic talent and scientific ability, studied birds in an attempt to create a machine that was capable of flight. Today, Leonardo da Vinci’s endeavour may be considered one of the early examples of biomimicry. Corresponding to the word’s Greek roots, the quickly growing field is centred on the imitation of life in a vast array of contexts .

Today, scientists, artists and and diverse groups of professionals somewhere in between the two, are taking inspiration from nature in a serious way. Why look to nature to solve human problems? Well, because nature simply seems to do things right. Besides, who’s got more than 4 billion years experience on their CV?

Nature has endowed many of its creatures and configurations with multitudes of fascinating qualities. Consider the power of the human brain, the efficiency of a honeycomb’s structure or the versatility of an elephants trunk; able to lift a single blade of grass or tear down an entire tree. Speaking of genius, according to da Vinci ¨Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.¨

If you’re new to biomimetics, you may want to check out the TED talk above by Janine Benyus. She introduces us to a bunch of amazing examples of biomimicry including Sharklet technologies’ anti bacterial products inspired by the microbe-resistant properties of sharkskin and Calera’s concrete that’s using CO2 as one of its main building blocks, much the way coral reefs do.

Since this talk was given in 2009, some of this may be old news if you’ve been keeping up to speed on the biomimicry scene. Instead, you may want to find out more about how leaf veins are inspiring new models for water and electricity distribution methods ; how mold is being  studied to create more efficient transport routes or how insects are inspiring algorithms.

While biomimicry’s being applied in many fields ranging from medicine to architecture, let’s not forget about robotics! We’ve shown you quite a few on this blog but you should also check out a wall-scaling bot from Simon Frasier University inspired by the gecko’s sticky little toes and the German robotics company, Festo’s, elephant trunk.

Maybe you’re even interested in creating some of your own biomimetic designs? AskNature’s website is working on putting together a Biomimicry Taxonomy as a means to organize how different organisms meet different types of challenges.

Biomimetic  technologies are poised  to produce major societal and economical impacts in a large number industries like ICT and sectors such as healthcare. If you’re interested in this, you won’t want to miss the Living Machines Conference being hosted by the Convergent Science Network  July 9-12 in Barcelona. The venue for the conference is  la Pedrera, designed by  the famed ( and fellow nature aficionado), Antoni Gaudí!