Bionic Elephant's Trunk, Manta Rays and Jelly Fish 27
Zothecula writes "Festo, the automation company that designed the bionic penguin and its robotic stablemates – AirRay, AquaRay, AirJelly and AquaJelly – has found another natural model in its latest application of biomimicry – the elephant's trunk. Festo's Bionic Learning Network research program focuses on mechatronic and bionic concepts using nature as a model. 'The AquaJelly is possibly the most interesting of all the bionic creatures as it has been designed to autonomously emulate swarming behavior of wild jellyfish. Like the others, it consists of an electric drive unit and intelligent adaptive mechanism, but with a control board housed by a translucent dome, a water-tight body and eight tentacles. The control board has pressure, light and radio sensors that work with eight blue and eight white LEDs allowing communication between the AquaJellies.'"
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah but the video reminds me more of sandworms or other alien critters like that.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
an elephant's penis is prehensile
now you know.
Re: (Score:2)
that's not off topic, silly mod, the story is about a mechanical/pneumatic arm that's like an elephant's trunk, and it's also like an elephant's penis.
sheesh.
!bionic (Score:3)
Sorry to be the stickler, but someone needs to look at their dictionary. "Bionic" (a portmanteau of "bio" and "electronic") is a pretty much a synonym for cybernetic. This story is about biomimicry, not bionics.
Carry on. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
... and before stickler #2 gets to me, allow me to correct myself: "cybernetic organism", not "cybernetic".
Re:!bionic (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the word comes from bio- and -ic, which means "like" or "akin to." Bionic is really just a synonym for mimicry, although its usage in medicine is not necessarily the same.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bionic [wiktionary.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionics [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry crowdsource, but I am more inclined to trust the American Oxford Dictionary than the Wikipedia entry.
"bionic |biänik|
adjective
having artificial body parts, esp. electromechanical ones."
The trunk (Score:2)
Weaponize them and build an army (Score:2)
I, for one, welcome our new bionic penguin-ray-jellyfish-elephant-translucent-tentacled overlords.
Pictures? (Score:1)
Is anyone else finding it really hard to judge these things without realistic images? Most of these are heavily posed with a hand/arm model, which makes them hard to take at face value.
Re:Pictures? (Score:4, Informative)
here you go, movie:
http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/11082_11090.htm [festo.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Nice - they really focus on the handling assistant, but at about one-third to one-half of the way through, Holy Floating Balloons Batman! That Air Jelly is gorgeous.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
then you might find these interesting:
http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/9772_10378.htm#id_10378 [festo.com]
http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/9786_10401.htm#id_10401 [festo.com]
It needn't be a little penguin (Score:4, Funny)
.
Re: (Score:2)
but what do electric penguins dream of?