Scientists employing Bio-Inspired robots undercover to study animal behavior

 

The Carnegie Mellon snake robot has finally mastered the art of slithering up a sandy slope. (Image credit: Nico Zevallos and Chaohui Gong)

To study animal behavior researchers have created bio-inspired robots (Biobots), which is relatively  a new subcategory of robotics that involves fabricating robots inspired by biological systems and beings.

Bio-inspired robots that can fly like birds and creep like cockroaches are helping researchers to understand more about how animals move and behave in the natural world. Scientist are using robotic animals to learn about real ones.

Biorobots offer one big advantage over live animals, they do what researchers tell them to do. That gives scientists a degree of control over their experiments that can be difficult or impossible to achieve in any other way.

“If you can build a robot that you can embed in a group of animals as a stooge, and they accept that robot as one of them, then you can make the robot do things and see how real animals respond,” says Dora Biro, an animal cognition researcher at the University of Rochester, New York.

Scientists employing bio robots undercover to study animal behavior

Now,  scientists are sending these bio-robots creatures undercover to get a closer look at the lives of animals. Take a look at some of these bio-inspired robots that enthusiastically show the limits of engineering.

Bat robot, USA

US researchers  created this robotic bat, dubbed ‘B2’, to help them understand bat flight. B2 can execute sharp diving manoeuvres and banking turns and, as well as providing a way to mimic and study the flight mechanisms of real bats, it may feed into the design of more agile flying robots of the future, helping us reach inaccessible places without sustaining damage or causing injury.

In an article published in the journal Science Robotics, they explain how they stretched a 56-micrometre-thick (one micrometre = one-thousandth of a millimetre), silicone-based skin over B2’s wings, enabling it  “to morph its articulated structure in mid-air without losing an effective and smooth aerodynamic surface”.

"Because bat flight is fiendishly complex, requiring a system of muscles, bones and joints that incorporate folding of the wings in every wingbeat."

Peregrine falcon robot, USA

A small robot inspired by the way peregrine falcons and parrots fly and land on branches could revolutionize how we research wildlife and the environment, a new study has claimed.

The robot consists of a quadcopter drone and a pair of 3D-printed peregrine falcon feet, complete with motors and fishing line to mimic the gripping motions of the birds’ muscles and tendons, allowing it to stabilise itself and to carry objects.

The idea for this perching robot came from Stanford University engineer William Roderick, who was looking for a way to make a positive impact on the environment using his background in robotics.

In a Science Robotics article published in 2021, the researchers described how they modelled their robot’s legs on those of a peregrine falcon, incorporating motors to rotate the hips in the direction of the perch and artificial tendons that flex the toes and lock to grip. 

Rat robot, China & Japan

When scientists want to learn more about human mental disorders, they often look to animals with similar brains, such as rats and mice. These animals can act as important ‘models’ for human disease.

So in an effort to help standardize these interactions, at least from one side, Chinese and Japanese researchers collaborated to produce the WR-5, a robotic rat that interacts with real rats to study social integration. While they say it needs to be able to perform more complex behaviors like grooming, WR-5 did have a noticeable impact on behavior towards a ‘target’ rat, encouraging other rats to try to mate with the target. The researchers even suggest that with development it could have a potential role in helping to pacify stressed lab rats.

Falcon robot, UK

A robotic falcon is helping researchers answer one of the most intriguing questions in animal behaviour, are animals naturally selfish, or do they try to protect the group as a whole?

When researchers from the UK and the Netherlands sent their robotic bird of prey into a flock of pigeons. They came to the conclusion,  “We find no support for a selfish herd hypothesis in pigeon flocks,” they concluded in a Current Biology article published in 2021. Instead, they favour cooperative behavior, which could have evolved because there is a decent chance of the whole group surviving, meaning, of course, that each individual survives too.

Guppy robot, Germany

German researchers have been employing a robotic fish to help them understand collective behavior in guppy pairings. Writing in the journal Biology Letters in 2020, the team explained that they moved a 3D-printed plastic fish replica around using magnets attracted to a wheeled robot beneath the test tank. The robot was programmed to copy the speed and direction of the individual fish it was partnered with and to stay the same distance away.

Cockroach robot, USA

It might have four legs instead of six, but this 4.5cm-long cockroach-like robot gets the most out of them, scuttling around and scaling walls like its insect counterparts, seems to be go anywhere.

Developed by Harvard University engineers, the 1.5g bot is based on an earlier design for miniature walking robots, and can climb vertical and curved surfaces, including parts from the inside of a jet engine.

Bee and fish robots, Europe

European researchers have used these robot to help bees and fish communicate over long distance. In 2019, a team of engineers from four European universities managed to get Austrian honeybees to talk to Swiss zebrafish by sending in robot bees and robot fish – that they called ‘agents’ – to infiltrate their social groups. These robot go-betweens tailored their messaging to their assigned species, with the robo-fish using colours and tail movements, while a stationary bee robot (the white device in this image) vibrated and changed temperature to transmit information.

Researchers can move Robobee (shown at center) and vibrate its plastic wing to simulate the "waggle dance" that honeybees use to tell their hive mates where to locate food sources. Robobee's waggle dance is good enough to guide real bees to new food sources sometimes.

Source: Science Focus