Cockroaches inspire robot developments

The science behind and survivability of the cockroach makes it one of the top-managed pests, but that is exactly what inspires some robotics researchers. Let’s take a look at several robotic projects that attempt to emulate cockroach movements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ph705NvEHg

A mechanical engineering laboratory at Johns Hopkins University is developing a robot with cockroach-inspired wings. The lab is creating experimental tools and theoretical models to create “the new field of terradynamics” that describe complex locomotor-terrain interactions to better understand animal locomotion and improve robot locomotion in complex terrains. Terradynamics is an approach for understanding and predicting how small-legged robots – and potentially animals – move on and interact with complex granular materials, such as sand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4sxJGWrgyg

University of California, Berkeley, researchers installed a shell on a legged robot, mimicking a cockroach’s exoskeleton, which allowed it to flatten and slide through narrow gaps. It enabled the compressible robot with articulated mechanisms, aka CRAM, to autonomously navigate obstacles that they would otherwise have gotten stuck on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA87IctQ17U

Then there’s the “Cyroach,” or cyborg roach. This cockroach-controlled mobile robot is an experimental robotic system that uses a live cockroach as the controller of a three-wheeled robot. The system translates movements of a living insect into the physical locomotion of a robot. Distance sensors at the front of the robot provide navigation feedback to the roach, striving to create a pseudo-intelligent system with the cockroach as the central processing unit (CPU).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eunuHrTPS1o

Robots attempting to replicate antics of cockroaches is nothing new. A decade ago, Case Western Reserve University’s biology department created a hexapod robot with kinematics based on studies of the cockroach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKSJMdEQsfs

Even before the hexapod came the picture was this quick 3-motor cockroach-inspired robot. The user says the footage is from “Robot Hack-fest (SmallGods)” in 1997.

Do you know of any other cockroach-inspired developments, robotic or not? Comment below.