A roach rides the robot it inspired. (credit: PolyPEDAL Lab, University of California at Berkeley)
Just about everyone who has experienced urban living also has experienced some unwanted urban visitors: cockroaches. These agile beasts can make their way into locations that seem sealed off from the world outside the apartment. When found, they scramble out of sight with remarkable speed.
Researchers have subjected cockroaches to obstacle courses and full-body stress tests that would turn lesser animals to jello. The results show that despite their hard exoskeleton, roaches are remarkably flexible and use that flexibility to navigate spaces that are a fraction of their normal body size. Inspired by their results, the authors have built the first generation of a robot series based on cockroach mechanics.
We tend to portray exoskeletons as hard, rigid surfaces. And compared to skin, they are. But as anyone who has ever smashed a roach will tell you, they don't break with a crispy, snapping sound—it's more of a squish. To find out just how much give the exoskeletons have, a new paper by authors Kaushik Jayarama and Robert Full of Berkeley studied the American cockroach. "We selected the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana, because of its high speed, maneuverability, robustness, and tenacity to enter and leave spaces," they write.
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