Using nature to inspire robotics
Scientists looking to nature for inspiration in solving humanity’s problems gathered at Harvard Medical School (HMS) on Friday to learn how robotics is helping to improve medical care. Participants in the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering’s annual symposium, called “Noise and Rhythm: Harnessing Complexity in Medicine and Robotics,” heard about how advances in the field are improving artificial limbs, about how other devices are teaching injured people to walk, about manufacturing and control of small flying robots, and about advances in “swarm intelligence” controlling bunches of machines. Wyss Director Donald Ingber, the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at HMS and professor of bioengineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, introduced the daylong event, which took place at HMS’s New Research Building. Ingber said the Wyss has come a long way in the three-and-a-half years since it began, and today has 300 full-time staff members, 100,000 square feet of space,...