Robot boom of 2012

Last year was a robots boom: robots inspired by nature, cleaning nature, tracking human created disasters, exploring nature, saving energy, making our lives easier and more interesting. Here are five of the great designed robots inspired by natural world and created during 2012:

1. Underwater robot that measures arctic ice in 3D. This robot is the only one that can tell scintists whats really goes on under the ice. Researches will be able to go beyond the satellite measurement and assesment of the climate changes that effects ice in Antarctica. The underwater vehicle swims 20 meters below the ice and store the collected data in an onboard computer. All the data is converted into a 3D map after each survey.

2. Robot that repears coral reefs. Scintists from Herriott-Watt University in Scotland developed micro-robots that are able to piece together corals that were damaged by nature disasters enabling them to regrow.

3. DARPA develped a nature inspired drone that behaves as a maple seed, can fly around the room and move up and down spinning like a maple seed. The drone is designed for the military intelligence information collecting.

4. Robot that seek for a sunny spots in your house and moves your plants there during the day. Not must have robot, but still a very nice idea and implementation.

5. This tiny dragonfly robot could be used as a data collector or researcher. Scientists say it can help to find people after a nature disasters like tsunami or earthquake or after human disasters as niclear ones.



Via: www.treehugger.com