Building better high-speed robots with the help of cockroaches
Love them or hate them, cockroaches are notoriously good escape artists and can flee at astonishing speeds. However, this speed can make it difficult to sense the world around them: 'When animals move slowly they rely mostly on their nervous system for accomplishing tasks, but as the animals are pushed to more extreme performances they face potential constraints in their nervous system, for example sensory conduction delays', explains Jean-Michel Mongeau, a researcher from the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Mongeau goes on to suggest that in the face of these problems, using a system reliant on mechanical changes that can occur rapidly, rather than relying solely on the nervous system, might be advantageous during high-speed manoeuvres. With the help of his advisor, Robert Full, Mongeau decided to investigate potential mechanical systems and has published his findings in The Journal of Experimental Biology.