Because it can bring more exploration to mankind and promote scientific progress. Nature’s bionics is enough for humans to learn for many years.
Nature and technology may seem to be two completely different subjects, but in fact they are inextricably linked. In 1958, Steele, an American who served in the Air Force for 20 years after graduating from medical school, first proposed the theory of combining the two. However, it was not named bionics at that time, but his intention was to study biological biology. systems and organisms to find solutions to engineering problems. It was not until September 1960 that it was officially named bionics.
According to foreign media reports, China’s current achievements in jellyfish bionics have shocked the world. While jellyfish may not be the fastest swimmers in the ocean, they do swim in an "energy-efficient" way. By replicating this, Chinese scientists have created a jellyfish robot that will one day be able to autonomously explore the depths of the ocean.
Real jellyfish swim via "jet propulsion," expanding and contracting their bell-shaped bodies to push water behind them. While we've seen underwater robots emulate this technology before, most had to be connected to a power source or control system located on the surface. Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences decided to solve this problem and design a free-swimming jellyfish robot.
This model is modeled after the large moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita), which has a bell-shaped rigid head and a cylindrical jellyfish body underneath. The latter is covered in an umbrella-shaped membrane and contains four independent "six-bar linkages."
Forward motion is achieved by bending and straightening these "mechanisms," causing the body to push water out as it stretches and contracts. Additionally, the robot is able to steer vertically and horizontally by moving two "weights" located in its body cavity. The scientists are now developing software based on reinforcement learning that will allow the device to learn which movements cause changes in direction. With the help of various onboard sensors, the robot can follow a given route through the water while avoiding obstacles without any human control. It can even carry small payloads such as environmental sensors.
However, the origin of bionics may be traced back earlier. According to legend, during the Dayu period, people observed the activities of fish in the water and discovered that the swing of the fish's tail could control the movement and turning of the fish's body. , hence the wooden paddle mounted on the stern of the ship.
As Matt Fournier mentioned in his book "When Nature Inspires Technology" - many of the problems we face may have been encountered by natural creatures millions of years ago. After a long period of evolution, they developed a wonderful solution.
The solution mentioned by Matt Fournier is the core topic of bionics. People continue to create technologies that contribute to human development by imitating and simulating biological characteristics.
Especially after the concept of bionics was proposed, this subject was completely "ignited". According to a 2006 research report by bionics expert Richard Bonser, from 1985 -Between 2005, non-bionic design patents worldwide increased only 2.7 times, while bionic patents increased by as much as 93 times.
Nowadays, bionics, an independent discipline, has long been used in various fields. For example, the representative light field camera (also known as: fly eye camera) is inspired by the compound eye of a fly. Scientists imitated the honeycomb structure of the small eye of the compound eye to create a fly eye camera for scientific research, which can capture thousands of photos at a time. The rest of the photos, aircraft ground speed indicators, and aerial cameras all use this principle.
Another example is the electronic ink screen we are often exposed to today, which is inspired by butterflies. In fact, the bright colors displayed on the feathers of many butterflies and some birds (peacocks) come from chemical and physical colors. Chemical colors are pigment particles produced by their own physiological metabolism, while physical colors are caused by prisms on the surface. shown by the crystal structure. This light is split into bands of various colors and reflected back to the observer's eyes, much in the same way as a rainbow.
Qualcomm’s Mirasol display technology replicates this principle, simulating the vivid colors produced when a butterfly flaps its wings, thereby achieving high reflectivity and creating an “always-on” visual effect.
Of course, there are countless such inventions, such as the saw invented by Lu Ban by observing the edges of leaves, the helmet developed based on the head of a woodpecker, the radar based on bat principles, the electronic eye based on frog eyes, and Bell Labs invented a stronger sponge based on the structure of a sponge. Tough fiber optic cables, etc. There are many cases that seem to tell us that nature is the best teacher.
Basically speaking, the bionic robots mentioned above are not an isolated case, but bionics has been mostly used in the military, scientific research and industrial fields, and has been relatively rarely used in the consumer field. At present, we can also feel that more and more military technologies are gradually being used by civilians, so the integration of consumer robots and bionics no longer seems out of reach.
Why do you say that? If bionics is only attracting attention as a "new thing" in the short term, then in the long term, I believe that robots will obviously take on more diversified tasks in life. .