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The Coolest and Most Terrifying Biomimetic Robots
Building a better bot sometimes means looking outside the shop for inspiration. Borrowing from the characteristics and abilities of insects, birds, fish and mammals, scientists and engineers have designed robots that can swim, jump, snuggle, and steal books.
Some guy in Japan even built an 11-meter-long, smoke-blowing contraption inspired by a rhinoceros beetle.
Here are a few of the most awesome and most terrifying biomimetic robots around.
Spiderbot
Inspiration: Arachnids
What's Cool About It: Wearable, personal space defending, anti-creep device.
Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht and Austrian software developer Daniel Schatzmayr have taken shoulder pads to a new extreme with The Robotic Spider Dress. Much to our delight, this biomimetic fashion statement crawled onto the catwalk earlier this year. With its combination of sensors and animated legs, the dress protects wearers from objects that might get too close. Don't mess with this dress, people.
Video: Anouk Wipprecht/YouTube
Robo-Ants
Inspiration: Argentine ants
What's Cool About It: Pathfinding bots that learn from one another.
Each of these ant-mimicking robots is named Alice – and the colony of the sugar cube-size machines is called "The Alices." Together, the roboants work to find and learn the most efficient path through an obstacle course – much as real ants do, when they're on the move.
As described in March in PLOS Computational Biology, the Alices use light (instead of chemical pheromones) to mark their route. Light-detecting antennae search for the illuminated botsteps of previous Alices, which leave a blazing trail through the maze. As more and more bots travel the same road, it becomes brighter and brighter, eventually helping direct the entire colony from point Ant to point Bot.
Video: NewsInWorldNow/YouTube
Hummingbot
Inspiration: Hummingbird
What's Cool About It: Slightly sinister.
Equipped with a video camera, this remote-controlled spybot is an accomplished hummingbird impostor. Agile and weighing about as much as a AA battery, the robot-in-disguise can fly, hover, and maneuver like a real hummingbird. Which is all good, except that hummingbirds aren't found much outside the Americas – which means that this DARPA-sponsored creation might stand out in more than a few places.
Developed by AeroVironment. Video: theworacle/YouTube
Caterbotter
What's Cool About It: Rolls into a ball and escapes robot-haters.
Inspiration: Ballistic caterpillars
When threatened, some caterpillars will snap themselves into a wheel shape and roll away at astonishing speeds. For whatever reason, scientists from Tufts University decided to create a robot that could mimic the ballistic rolling action of these caterpillars.
We're glad they did. Made from pliant silicon rubber studded with shape memory coils, the 10-centimeter-long soft-bodied robot, called GoQBot, can curl into a ball and charge away in less than 100 milliseconds.
Zoom, zoom!
Video: InstituteofPhysics/YouTube
Bot Pack
Inspiration: Dogs, and a mule.
What's Terrifying About It: Listening, following, cinder block-chucking.
In an earlier incarnation, headless BigDog the RoboMule merely stomped around, able to carry 340 pounds over rough terrain, uphill, going 4 miles per hour.
Then Boston Dynamics added a little bit of sinister bling: A fifth arm (head) that can throw stuff. Like, cinder blocks and stuff. How convenient.
But there are more members in the pack. AlphaDog can carry 400 pounds for 20 miles, and can even stand up after lying down.
Rat-Bot
Inspiration: Rats.
What's Cool About It: Whisker-guided and adorable.
Instead of cameras, robo-rat uses its whiskers to navigate in the dark, much as real rats do. Moving back and forth at five times per second, the faux whiskers tell the robot – called SCRATCHbot – when it's approaching objects. Developed by a team at the Bristol Robotics Lab, the tailless rat is really rather adorable for a bright yellow metal version of a rodent.
Video: BristolRoboticsLab/YouTube
Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/biomimetic-robots/
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.