Research

Not only do sperm whale have a form of “alphabet” and form vowels within their vocalizations but the structure of these vowels behaves in the same way as human speech, the new study has found.

Researchers built modular “SGbots” that communicate locally and collectively adjust their shape—blooming or retracting—to regulate sunlight in real-world window tests.

Georgia Tech researchers developed swarms of simple robotic particles that coordinate and self-organize without electronics, software, or sensing, relying entirely on physical design and local interactions.

By encoding interaction rules directly into physical structure, researchers showed that coordinated group behavior can emerge without digital control, sensors, or centralized systems.

Researchers at Tufts University have developed a biomimetic coating that changes color when struck, revealing both the location and approximate strength of an impact without needing embedded electronics.

In the future, tiny flying robots could be deployed to aid in the search for survivors trapped beneath the rubble after a devastating earthquake.

Grasshoppers may not spring to mind as paragons of graceful flight. But for a team of Princeton engineers, these gangly insects have inspired a new approach to robotic wings.

Bees navigate their surroundings with astonishing precision. Their brains are now inspiring the design of tiny, low-power chips that could one day guide miniature robots and sensors.

Leaving breadcrumbs (well, pheronome trails) to lead the way. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10956014/

This article reports on a robot system inspired by how ants communicate using pheromone trails. Instead of real chemicals, the robots follow artificial “pheromone” signals so they can coordinate with one another and make group decisions in a similar way to ants.

Fractals! Ant colonies, materials like gases and liquids, and robot swarms may all follow a similar underlying pattern: lots of individuals behaving somewhat randomly, but still producing large-scale collective behaviour.

Honeybees do more than just follow the “direction and distance” in another bee’s waggle dance. They seem to combine that message with their own memory of landmarks in the landscape, so they can form an expectation of what the route should look like and fly more efficiently.