About five years ago, a bizarre idea occurred to me. At the time, I was designing complex electronic circuits to mimic a small portion of an insect brain. These circuits would be created on a tiny ...

The compound eyes of the humble fruit fly are a marvel of nature. They are wide-angle and can process visual information ...

Tiny robots inspired by insects could soon glide across water, scouting flooded areas, monitoring pollutants, or collecting samples, thanks to a breakthrough in soft robotics. Researchers at the ...

In an age of increasingly advanced robotics, one team has well and truly bucked the trend, instead finding inspiration within the pinhead-sized brain of a tiny flying insect in order to build a robot ...

Bees navigate long distances without satellites, digital maps, or external guidance. By reading patterns ...

Insect-scale robots can squeeze into places their larger counterparts can't, like deep into a collapsed building to search for survivors after an earthquake. However, as they move through the rubble, ...

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. DENVER (KDVR) — A University of Colorado ...

Kaushik Jayaram envisions a day when swarms of tiny robots, some weighing no more than a paperclip, will crawl through airplanes or into buildings after an earthquake—searching for survivors or ...

(Nanowerk Spotlight) Building robots that can effortlessly mimic the movements of insects on water has been a persistent challenge in robotics. The ability to move autonomously and efficiently in ...

Rapid declines in insect populations are leading to concerns that the pollination of important crops could soon come under threat. Tiny flying robots designed by MIT researchers could one day provide ...

Water striders are fascinating to watch, as they scoot across the water while supported by surface tension. Scientists have now built a tiny robotic version of the insect, which utilizes a ...

A 301 mg soft robot jumps continuously under constant light without batteries or electronics, using snap-through buckling and self-shadowing to create an autonomous feedback loop. (Nanowerk Spotlight) ...