Robotic jellyfish, butterflies mimic nature

One of the big questions in robotics today centers on how to improve movements. Mimicking human movements has already been shown to be impractical for mobility in machines, as current technology does not allow robot makers to perfectly copy human anatomy. This has led robotics companies to look at other ways for robots to get around. While human movement might be a little too complicated for modern robots, one Germany company is still looking at nature to see what robots are good at mimicking.

Festo has created robotic animals that move by using realistic motions copying each creature. The company flaunted recently some of its inventions at the USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C.

The company's signature creation is the eMotionButterfly, which is a 30g robotic butterfly. It works using cameras set up around a room to track up to 10 different butterflies at once. These butterflies can communicate with each other in the air using data to ensure there are no collisions.

Two other robots Festo showed off are the AirJelly and AirPenguin. The AirJelly is a robotic jellyfish that moves about in the air using peristaltic motion with eight synthetic tentacles. The AirPenguin is full of helium and floats through the air by flapping slowly its wings.

All of these robots are lightweight machines meant to showcase what robots are capable of in terms of movement. As they exist today, they are not going to be doing any heavy lifting or things of that nature. They are designed to move about in a coordinated way within a confined space. It is possible to imagine things like this might be useful in distributing Wi-Fi signals in large areas such as arenas.