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 ...

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, ...

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

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 ...

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.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 ...

Ripple bugs’ fan-like legs inspired engineers to build the Rhagobot, a tiny robot with self-morphing fans. By mimicking these insects’ passive, ultra-fast movements, the robot gains speed, control, ...

An organic synapse array enables night vision and pattern recognition in insect robots by detecting near-infrared light and triggering real-time motor responses. (Nanowerk Spotlight) Insect-scale ...

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) ...

Shape-morphing, insect-scale robots that feature an origami-inspired design and eight independently actuated degrees of freedom, powered by custom piezoelectric actuators for enhanced mechanical ...