Festo's animal robots

National Geographic has a neat mini-article on aquatic animal robots that take their cue (form and purpose) from real-life animals. Amazing to see how complicated it is to design and build something as simple as a lobster or something that can swim as naturally as a penguin.



AquaPenguins (pictured) can navigate through a tank without human help and--unlike real penguins--swim in reverse.

Built by Festo, a German engineering company that mostly sells pneumatic equipment to the automotive industry, the AquaPenguin was designed to test new technologies. The robots have inspired Festo's BionicTripod and FinGripper, used to manipulate items--even fragile ones--on an assembly line.



AquaJelly robots (pictured) swim with their own kind by blinking at them. The jellyfish-inspired machines communicate with each other via eleven infrared LEDs inside their domes.

German engineering company Festo is using the jellies to test whether large-scale engineering problems can be solved by the cooperation of many smaller systems.