Aug 05

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: 30-foot ‘Buckyball’, Olympic stadium Lego replica and the ‘Mantabot’

Posted in: Today's Chili
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

DNP Inhabitat's Week in Green TKTKTK

Building a robot that can stand and walk on two legs like a human is challenging enough — but what about a robot that swims like a human? A team from Tokyo University of Technology has created the Swumanoid, a swimming robot that’s based on the physique of a human swimmer and can swim a variety of strokes. But why should a swimming robot have to look like a person? Most fish swim much faster, more gracefully and more efficiently than humans. That’s why scientists from the University of Virginia are developing the Mantabot, a robot that looks and swims like a ray.

Continue reading Inhabitat’s Week in Green: 30-foot ‘Buckyball’, Olympic stadium Lego replica and the ‘Mantabot’

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Inhabitat’s Week in Green: 30-foot ‘Buckyball’, Olympic stadium Lego replica and the ‘Mantabot’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Aug 2012 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 26

Mantabot travels through the seas without much effort

Posted in: Today's Chili

Robots have certainly come a long way to help assist us in our everyday life, and we have seen our fair share of land-based humanoid robots in addition to those robots that ply their trade in the air. How about robots which will go through the waters of the world? This might just convince those paranoid androids (humans, actually) that there is a pending robot apocalypse coming your way – and the introduction of the Mantabot could very well usher in this era. The Mantabot was specially designed to mimic the swimming style of a manta ray, and this is yet another instance of nature that has proved to be the instrument of inspiration for modern day technology.

Not only that, roboticists have successfully accomplished this particular goal with an extremely creepy and realistic effect. Professor Hilary Bart-Smith from the University of Virginia claims that this particular robot was specially meant to explore the future of bio-mechanical engineering after checking out the special way in which manta rays actually weave their way through water. Just check out the video above and see for yourself!

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Water strider-like robot jumps on water, Botiful telepresence robot is extremely cute,

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