Scientists have long been working on the creation of robots for search and rescue missions, like the kind undertaken by disaster relief crews following last year's tsunami in Japan. Now, a group of researchers came up with a successful design for a robot that can be used for operations in pitch black locations. Inspired by an Etruscan shrew, one of the tiniest mammals in the world, this robot called Shrewbot is fitted with synthetic whiskers that work just like the real thing.
Etruscan shrews are blind, and rely on their whiskers to get around and capture prey. Like real shrews, the Shrewbot's whiskers pick up vibrations from its environment, which its system then translates into information about shape and texture. Shrewbot's developers from the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and the University of Sheffield Active Touch Laboratory chose to study and design robots that navigate with the sense of touch, because the sense of sight has already been extensively researched.
In the future, the blind but bewhiskered Shrewbot could be sent to places and undertake tasks unsafe for humans, just like the radiation-sniffing and the debris-clearing robots that helped out in Fukushima. Professor Tony Pipe of Bristol explained: "There are real advantages to this form of tactile sensing for robots that we are just beginning to understand. For example this whisker technology could have applications in dark, dangerous or smoke filled environments which are unsafe for humans, where in future we might want robots to go."
University of Bristol via Makezine
This article was written by Mariella Moon and originally appeared on Tecca
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