"They can tolerate flattening not because the roach exoskeleton is soft, but because it is composed of rigid plates connected by more flexible tissue. When flattened, they resort to a kind of locomotion that hasn’t been studied before, Dr. Full said."
Curious to hear from those with an expertise in robotics
What fascinates me about insect exoskeleton evolution is how much they are automatically dealing with the limitations of their surrounding physical environment via physics of the exoskeleton itself.
nature is so ingenious, i love it. (exo-)skeletons serve as both structure (anchor points for muscles) and protection (absorb/transfer energy that would otherwise rip up soft tissue). here, it's showing us that there is no reason that exoskeletons have to be rigidly shaped to fulfill these two purposes. this is a dynamic solution for a dynamic problem.
("full" disclosure: i did an internship with bob full many moons ago =)
another interesting place that we see this is in modeling locomotion itself. our intuition tells us that it takes active control to walk or run, and that's the way we try to build robots. but nature tries to leverage passive dynamics as much as possible (see andy ruina's work in this area: http://ruina.tam.cornell.edu/ ), and by doing so, minimizes both active control and energy use.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 22.9 ms ] threadCurious to hear from those with an expertise in robotics
("full" disclosure: i did an internship with bob full many moons ago =)
another interesting place that we see this is in modeling locomotion itself. our intuition tells us that it takes active control to walk or run, and that's the way we try to build robots. but nature tries to leverage passive dynamics as much as possible (see andy ruina's work in this area: http://ruina.tam.cornell.edu/ ), and by doing so, minimizes both active control and energy use.