ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Robert Full - Biologist
Robert Full studies cockroach legs and gecko feet. His research is helping build tomorrow's robots, based on evolution's ancient engineering.

Why you should listen

UC Berkeley biologist Robert Full is fascinated by the motion of creatures like cockroaches, crabs and geckos having many legs, unusual feet or talented tails. He has led an effort to demonstrate the value of learning from Nature by the creating interdisciplinary collaborations of biologists, engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists from academia and industry. He founded CiBER, the Center for interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research, and the Poly-PEDAL Laboratory, which studies the Performance, Energetics and Dynamics of Animal Locomotion (PEDAL) in many-footed creatures (Poly).

His research shows how studying a diversity of animals leads to the discovery of general principles which inspire the design of novel circuits, artificial muscles, exoskeletons, versatile scampering legged search-and-rescue robots and synthetic self-cleaning dry adhesives based on gecko feet. He is passionate about discovery-based education leading to innovation -- and he even helped Pixar’s insect animations in the film A Bug's Life.

More profile about the speaker
Robert Full | Speaker | TED.com
TED2002

Robert Full: Robots inspired by cockroach ingenuity

Filmed:
1,087,679 views

Insects and animals have evolved some amazing skills -- but, as Robert Full notes, many animals are actually over-engineered. The trick is to copy only what's necessary. He shows how human engineers can learn from animals' tricks.
- Biologist
Robert Full studies cockroach legs and gecko feet. His research is helping build tomorrow's robots, based on evolution's ancient engineering. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:19
Welcome. If I could have the first slide, please?
0
1000
5000
00:33
Contrary to calculations made by some engineers, bees can fly,
1
15000
5000
00:38
dolphins can swim, and geckos can even climb
2
20000
7000
00:45
up the smoothest surfaces. Now, what I want to do, in the short time I have,
3
27000
6000
00:51
is to try to allow each of you to experience
4
33000
4000
00:55
the thrill of revealing nature's design.
5
37000
6000
01:01
I get to do this all the time, and it's just incredible.
6
43000
2000
01:03
I want to try to share just a little bit of that with you in this presentation.
7
45000
6000
01:09
The challenge of looking at nature's designs --
8
51000
2000
01:11
and I'll tell you the way that we perceive it, and the way we've used it.
9
53000
4000
01:15
The challenge, of course, is to answer this question:
10
57000
2000
01:17
what permits this extraordinary performance of animals
11
59000
3000
01:20
that allows them basically to go anywhere?
12
62000
3000
01:23
And if we could figure that out, how can we implement those designs?
13
65000
7000
01:30
Well, many biologists will tell engineers, and others,
14
72000
3000
01:33
organisms have millions of years to get it right;
15
75000
3000
01:36
they're spectacular; they can do everything wonderfully well.
16
78000
3000
01:39
So, the answer is bio-mimicry: just copy nature directly.
17
81000
4000
01:43
We know from working on animals that the truth is
18
85000
5000
01:48
that's exactly what you don't want to do -- because evolution works
19
90000
4000
01:52
on the just-good-enough principle, not on a perfecting principle.
20
94000
3000
01:55
And the constraints in building any organism, when you look at it,
21
97000
4000
01:59
are really severe. Natural technologies have incredible constraints.
22
101000
5000
02:04
Think about it. If you were an engineer and I told you
23
106000
3000
02:07
that you had to build an automobile, but it had to start off to be this big,
24
109000
5000
02:12
then it had to grow to be full size and had to work every step along the way.
25
114000
4000
02:16
Or think about the fact that if you build an automobile, I'll tell you that you also -- inside it --
26
118000
4000
02:20
have to put a factory that allows you to make another automobile.
27
122000
4000
02:24
(Laughter)
28
126000
2000
02:26
And you can absolutely never, absolutely never, because of history
29
128000
4000
02:30
and the inherited plan, start with a clean slate.
30
132000
4000
02:34
So, organisms have this important history.
31
136000
3000
02:37
Really evolution works more like a tinkerer than an engineer.
32
139000
5000
02:42
And this is really important when you begin to look at animals.
33
144000
3000
02:45
Instead, we believe you need to be inspired by biology.
34
147000
7000
02:52
You need to discover the general principles of nature,
35
154000
4000
02:56
and then use these analogies when they're advantageous.
36
158000
3000
03:02
This is a real challenge to do this, because animals,
37
164000
3000
03:05
when you start to really look inside them -- how they work --
38
167000
3000
03:08
appear hopelessly complex. There's no detailed history
39
170000
4000
03:12
of the design plans, you can't go look it up anywhere.
40
174000
3000
03:15
They have way too many motions for their joints, too many muscles.
41
177000
4000
03:19
Even the simplest animal we think of, something like an insect,
42
181000
3000
03:22
and they have more neurons and connections than you can imagine.
43
184000
3000
03:25
How can you make sense of this? Well, we believed --
44
187000
5000
03:30
and we hypothesized -- that one way animals could work simply,
45
192000
5000
03:35
is if the control of their movements
46
197000
3000
03:38
tended to be built into their bodies themselves.
47
200000
6000
03:44
What we discovered was that two-, four-, six- and eight-legged animals
48
206000
7000
03:51
all produce the same forces on the ground when they move.
49
213000
3000
03:54
They all work like this kangaroo, they bounce.
50
216000
4000
03:58
And they can be modeled by a spring-mass system that we call the spring mass system
51
220000
4000
04:02
because we're biomechanists. It's actually a pogo stick.
52
224000
3000
04:05
They all produce the pattern of a pogo stick. How is that true?
53
227000
4000
04:09
Well, a human, one of your legs works like two legs of a trotting dog,
54
231000
6000
04:15
or works like three legs, together as one, of a trotting insect,
55
237000
4000
04:19
or four legs as one of a trotting crab.
56
241000
2000
04:21
And then they alternate in their propulsion,
57
243000
4000
04:25
but the patterns are all the same. Almost every organism we've looked at this way
58
247000
5000
04:30
-- you'll see next week, I'll give you a hint,
59
252000
2000
04:32
there'll be an article coming out that says that really big things
60
254000
3000
04:35
like T. rex probably couldn't do this, but you'll see that next week.
61
257000
4000
04:39
Now, what's interesting is the animals, then -- we said -- bounce along
62
261000
2000
04:41
the vertical plane this way, and in our collaborations with Pixar,
63
263000
3000
04:44
in "A Bug's Life," we discussed the
64
266000
2000
04:46
bipedal nature of the characters of the ants.
65
268000
3000
04:49
And we told them, of course, they move in another plane as well.
66
271000
2000
04:51
And they asked us this question. They say, "Why model
67
273000
3000
04:54
just in the sagittal plane or the vertical plane,
68
276000
2000
04:56
when you're telling us these animals are moving
69
278000
2000
04:58
in the horizontal plane?" This is a good question.
70
280000
3000
05:01
Nobody in biology ever modeled it this way.
71
283000
3000
05:04
We took their advice and we modeled the animals moving
72
286000
4000
05:08
in the horizontal plane as well. We took their three legs,
73
290000
3000
05:11
we collapsed them down as one.
74
293000
1000
05:12
We got some of the best mathematicians in the world
75
294000
3000
05:15
from Princeton to work on this problem.
76
297000
2000
05:17
And we were able to create a model
77
299000
3000
05:20
where animals are not only bouncing up and down,
78
302000
1000
05:21
but they're also bouncing side to side at the same time.
79
303000
4000
05:25
And many organisms fit this kind of pattern.
80
307000
2000
05:27
Now, why is this important to have this model?
81
309000
2000
05:29
Because it's very interesting. When you take this model
82
311000
3000
05:32
and you perturb it, you give it a push,
83
314000
3000
05:35
as it bumps into something, it self-stabilizes, with no brain
84
317000
4000
05:39
or no reflexes, just by the structure alone.
85
321000
4000
05:43
It's a beautiful model. Let's look at the mathematics.
86
325000
5000
05:48
(Laughter)
87
330000
2000
05:50
That's enough!
88
332000
1000
05:51
(Laughter)
89
333000
4000
05:55
The animals, when you look at them running,
90
337000
2000
05:57
appear to be self-stabilizing like this,
91
339000
3000
06:00
using basically springy legs. That is, the legs can do
92
342000
3000
06:03
computations on their own; the control algorithms, in a sense,
93
345000
3000
06:06
are embedded in the form of the animal itself.
94
348000
3000
06:09
Why haven't we been more inspired by nature and these kinds of discoveries?
95
351000
7000
06:16
Well, I would argue that human technologies are really different from
96
358000
4000
06:20
natural technologies, at least they have been so far.
97
362000
3000
06:23
Think about the typical kind of robot that you see.
98
365000
5000
06:28
Human technologies have tended to be large, flat,
99
370000
3000
06:31
with right angles, stiff, made of metal. They have rolling devices
100
373000
5000
06:36
and axles. There are very few motors, very few sensors.
101
378000
3000
06:39
Whereas nature tends to be small, and curved,
102
381000
5000
06:44
and it bends and twists, and has legs instead, and appendages,
103
386000
3000
06:47
and has many muscles and many, many sensors.
104
389000
3000
06:50
So it's a very different design. However, what's changing,
105
392000
4000
06:54
what's really exciting -- and I'll show you some of that next --
106
396000
2000
06:56
is that as human technology takes on more of the characteristics
107
398000
3000
06:59
of nature, then nature really can become a much more useful teacher.
108
401000
6000
07:05
And here's one example that's really exciting.
109
407000
2000
07:07
This is a collaboration we have with Stanford.
110
409000
2000
07:09
And they developed this new technique, called Shape Deposition Manufacturing.
111
411000
4000
07:13
It's a technique where they can mix materials together and mold any shape
112
415000
4000
07:17
that they like, and put in the material properties.
113
419000
4000
07:21
They can embed sensors and actuators right in the form itself.
114
423000
3000
07:24
For example, here's a leg: the clear part is stiff,
115
426000
5000
07:29
the white part is compliant, and you don't need any axles there or anything.
116
431000
3000
07:32
It just bends by itself beautifully.
117
434000
3000
07:35
So, you can put those properties in. It inspired them to show off
118
437000
3000
07:38
this design by producing a little robot they named Sprawl.
119
440000
6000
07:44
Our work has also inspired another robot, a biologically inspired bouncing robot,
120
446000
4000
07:48
from the University of Michigan and McGill
121
450000
2000
07:50
named RHex, for robot hexapod, and this one's autonomous.
122
452000
8000
07:58
Let's go to the video, and let me show you some of these animals moving
123
460000
3000
08:01
and then some of the simple robots
124
463000
2000
08:03
that have been inspired by our discoveries.
125
465000
3000
08:06
Here's what some of you did this morning, although you did it outside,
126
468000
4000
08:10
not on a treadmill.
127
472000
2000
08:12
Here's what we do.
128
474000
3000
08:15
(Laughter)
129
477000
2000
08:17
This is a death's head cockroach. This is an American cockroach
130
479000
5000
08:22
you think you don't have in your kitchen.
131
484000
1000
08:23
This is an eight-legged scorpion, six-legged ant, forty-four-legged centipede.
132
485000
7000
08:30
Now, I said all these animals are sort of working like pogo sticks --
133
492000
3000
08:33
they're bouncing along as they move. And you can see that
134
495000
4000
08:37
in this ghost crab, from the beaches of Panama and North Carolina.
135
499000
3000
08:40
It goes up to four meters per second when it runs.
136
502000
3000
08:43
It actually leaps into the air, and has aerial phases
137
505000
3000
08:46
when it does it, like a horse, and you'll see it's bouncing here.
138
508000
4000
08:50
What we discovered is whether you look at the leg of a human
139
512000
3000
08:53
like Richard, or a cockroach, or a crab, or a kangaroo,
140
515000
6000
08:59
the relative leg stiffness of that spring is the same for everything we've seen so far.
141
521000
5000
09:04
Now, what good are springy legs then? What can they do?
142
526000
2000
09:06
Well, we wanted to see if they allowed the animals
143
528000
2000
09:08
to have greater stability and maneuverability.
144
530000
3000
09:11
So, we built a terrain that had obstacles three times the hip height
145
533000
4000
09:15
of the animals that we're looking at.
146
537000
1000
09:16
And we were certain they couldn't do this. And here's what they did.
147
538000
4000
09:20
The animal ran over it and it didn't even slow down!
148
542000
3000
09:23
It didn't decrease its preferred speed at all.
149
545000
2000
09:25
We couldn't believe that it could do this. It said to us
150
547000
3000
09:28
that if you could build a robot with very simple, springy legs,
151
550000
5000
09:33
you could make it as maneuverable as any that's ever been built.
152
555000
6000
09:39
Here's the first example of that. This is the Stanford
153
561000
2000
09:41
Shape Deposition Manufactured robot, named Sprawl.
154
563000
3000
09:44
It has six legs -- there are the tuned, springy legs.
155
566000
6000
09:50
It moves in a gait that an insect uses, and here it is
156
572000
3000
09:53
going on the treadmill. Now, what's important about this robot,
157
575000
7000
10:00
compared to other robots, is that it can't see anything,
158
582000
3000
10:03
it can't feel anything, it doesn't have a brain, yet it can maneuver
159
585000
6000
10:09
over these obstacles without any difficulty whatsoever.
160
591000
6000
10:15
It's this technique of building the properties into the form.
161
597000
4000
10:19
This is a graduate student. This is what he's doing to his thesis project --
162
601000
3000
10:22
very robust, if a graduate student
163
604000
2000
10:24
does that to his thesis project.
164
606000
2000
10:26
(Laughter)
165
608000
1000
10:27
This is from McGill and University of Michigan. This is the RHex,
166
609000
4000
10:31
making its first outing in a demo.
167
613000
3000
10:34
(Laughter)
168
616000
4000
10:38
Same principle: it only has six moving parts,
169
620000
5000
10:43
six motors, but it has springy, tuned legs. It moves in the gait of the insect.
170
625000
6000
10:49
It has the middle leg moving in synchrony with the front,
171
631000
4000
10:53
and the hind leg on the other side. Sort of an alternating tripod,
172
635000
4000
10:57
and they can negotiate obstacles just like the animal.
173
639000
4000
11:01
(Laughter)
174
643000
6000
11:07
(Voice: Oh my God.)
175
649000
1000
11:08
(Applause)
176
650000
5000
11:13
Robert Full: It'll go on different surfaces -- here's sand --
177
655000
2000
11:15
although we haven't perfected the feet yet, but I'll talk about that later.
178
657000
5000
11:20
Here's RHex entering the woods.
179
662000
3000
11:23
(Laughter)
180
665000
2000
11:38
Again, this robot can't see anything, it can't feel anything,
181
680000
4000
11:42
it has no brain. It's just working with a tuned mechanical system,
182
684000
6000
11:48
with very simple parts, but inspired from the fundamental dynamics of the animal.
183
690000
10000
11:58
(Voice: Ah, I love him, Bob.) RF: Here's it going down a pathway.
184
700000
8000
12:06
I presented this to the jet propulsion lab at NASA, and they said
185
708000
3000
12:09
that they had no ability to go down craters to look for ice,
186
711000
4000
12:13
and life, ultimately, on Mars. And he said --
187
715000
4000
12:17
especially with legged-robots, because they're way too complicated.
188
719000
2000
12:19
Nothing can do that. And I talk next. I showed them this video
189
721000
5000
12:24
with the simple design of RHex here. And just to convince them
190
726000
3000
12:27
we should go to Mars in 2011, I tinted the video orange
191
729000
4000
12:31
just to give them the sense of being on Mars.
192
733000
3000
12:34
(Laughter)
193
736000
1000
12:35
(Applause)
194
737000
6000
12:43
Another reason why animals have extraordinary performance,
195
745000
3000
12:46
and can go anywhere, is because they have an effective interaction
196
748000
3000
12:49
with the environment. The animal I'm going to show you,
197
751000
3000
12:52
that we studied to look at this, is the gecko.
198
754000
4000
12:56
We have one here and notice its position. It's holding on.
199
758000
7000
13:03
Now I'm going to challenge you. I'm going show you a video.
200
765000
3000
13:06
One of the animals is going to be running on the level,
201
768000
2000
13:08
and the other one's going to be running up a wall. Which one's which?
202
770000
4000
13:12
They're going at a meter a second. How many think the one on the left
203
774000
5000
13:17
is running up the wall?
204
779000
2000
13:19
(Applause)
205
781000
4000
13:23
Okay. The point is it's really hard to tell, isn't it? It's incredible,
206
785000
5000
13:28
we looked at students do this and they couldn't tell.
207
790000
2000
13:30
They can run up a wall at a meter a second, 15 steps per second,
208
792000
3000
13:33
and they look like they're running on the level. How do they do this?
209
795000
4000
13:37
It's just phenomenal. The one on the right was going up the hill.
210
799000
6000
13:43
How do they do this? They have bizarre toes. They have toes
211
805000
4000
13:47
that uncurl like party favors when you blow them out,
212
809000
4000
13:51
and then peel off the surface, like tape.
213
813000
3000
13:54
Like if we had a piece of tape now, we'd peel it this way.
214
816000
2000
13:56
They do this with their toes. It's bizarre! This peeling inspired
215
818000
7000
14:03
iRobot -- that we work with -- to build Mecho-Geckos.
216
825000
3000
14:06
Here's a legged version and a tractor version, or a bulldozer version.
217
828000
7000
14:13
Let's see some of the geckos move with some video,
218
835000
2000
14:15
and then I'll show you a little bit of a clip of the robots.
219
837000
3000
14:18
Here's the gecko running up a vertical surface. There it goes,
220
840000
3000
14:21
in real time. There it goes again. Obviously, we have to slow this down a little bit.
221
843000
7000
14:28
You can't use regular cameras.
222
850000
2000
14:30
You have to take 1,000 pictures per second to see this.
223
852000
3000
14:33
And here's some video at 1,000 frames per second.
224
855000
3000
14:36
Now, I want you to look at the animal's back.
225
858000
2000
14:38
Do you see how much it's bending like that? We can't figure that out --
226
860000
3000
14:41
that's an unsolved mystery. We don't know how it works.
227
863000
3000
14:44
If you have a son or a daughter that wants to come to Berkeley,
228
866000
3000
14:47
come to my lab and we'll figure this out. Okay, send them to Berkeley
229
869000
4000
14:51
because that's the next thing I want to do. Here's the gecko mill.
230
873000
3000
14:54
(Laughter)
231
876000
1000
14:55
It's a see-through treadmill with a see-through treadmill belt,
232
877000
3000
14:58
so we can watch the animal's feet, and videotape them
233
880000
3000
15:01
through the treadmill belt, to see how they move.
234
883000
3000
15:04
Here's the animal that we have here, running on a vertical surface.
235
886000
4000
15:08
Pick a foot and try to watch a toe, and see if you can see what the animal's doing.
236
890000
6000
15:14
See it uncurl and then peel these toes.
237
896000
2000
15:16
It can do this in 14 milliseconds. It's unbelievable.
238
898000
7000
15:23
Here are the robots that they inspire, the Mecho-Geckos from iRobot.
239
905000
4000
15:27
First we'll see the animals toes peeling -- look at that.
240
909000
5000
15:32
And here's the peeling action of the Mecho-Gecko.
241
914000
4000
15:36
It uses a pressure-sensitive adhesive to do it.
242
918000
3000
15:39
Peeling in the animal. Peeling in the Mecho-Gecko --
243
921000
3000
15:42
that allows them climb autonomously. Can go on the flat surface,
244
924000
3000
15:45
transition to a wall, and then go onto a ceiling.
245
927000
3000
15:48
There's the bulldozer version. Now, it doesn't use pressure-sensitive glue.
246
930000
6000
15:54
The animal does not use that.
247
936000
2000
15:56
But that's what we're limited to, at the moment.
248
938000
2000
15:58
What does the animal do? The animal has weird toes.
249
940000
5000
16:03
And if you look at the toes, they have these little leaves there,
250
945000
4000
16:07
and if you blow them up and zoom in, you'll see
251
949000
2000
16:09
that's there's little striations in these leaves.
252
951000
3000
16:12
And if you zoom in 270 times, you'll see it looks like a rug.
253
954000
7000
16:19
And if you blow that up, and zoom in 900 times,
254
961000
3000
16:22
you see there are hairs there, tiny hairs. And if you look carefully,
255
964000
5000
16:27
those tiny hairs have striations. And if you zoom in on those 30,000 times,
256
969000
6000
16:33
you'll see each hair has split ends.
257
975000
3000
16:36
And if you blow those up, they have these little structures on the end.
258
978000
5000
16:41
The smallest branch of the hairs looks like spatulae,
259
983000
2000
16:43
and an animal like that has one billion of these nano-size split ends,
260
985000
7000
16:50
to get very close to the surface. In fact, there's the diameter of your hair --
261
992000
5000
16:55
a gecko has two million of these, and each hair has 100 to 1,000 split ends.
262
997000
6000
17:01
Think of the contact of that that's possible.
263
1003000
3000
17:04
We were fortunate to work with another group
264
1006000
2000
17:06
at Stanford that built us a special manned sensor,
265
1008000
2000
17:08
that we were able to measure the force of an individual hair.
266
1010000
3000
17:11
Here's an individual hair with a little split end there.
267
1013000
5000
17:16
When we measured the forces, they were enormous.
268
1018000
2000
17:18
They were so large that a patch of hairs about this size --
269
1020000
3000
17:21
the gecko's foot could support the weight of a small child,
270
1023000
4000
17:25
about 40 pounds, easily. Now, how do they do it?
271
1027000
4000
17:29
We've recently discovered this. Do they do it by friction?
272
1031000
4000
17:33
No, force is too low. Do they do it by electrostatics?
273
1035000
3000
17:36
No, you can change the charge -- they still hold on.
274
1038000
2000
17:38
Do they do it by interlocking? That's kind of a like a Velcro-like thing.
275
1040000
3000
17:41
No, you can put them on molecular smooth surfaces -- they don't do it.
276
1043000
3000
17:44
How about suction? They stick on in a vacuum.
277
1046000
4000
17:48
How about wet adhesion? Or capillary adhesion?
278
1050000
3000
17:51
They don't have any glue, and they even stick under water just fine.
279
1053000
3000
17:54
If you put their foot under water, they grab on.
280
1056000
2000
17:56
How do they do it then? Believe it or not, they grab on
281
1058000
4000
18:00
by intermolecular forces, by Van der Waals forces.
282
1062000
4000
18:04
You know, you probably had this a long time ago in chemistry,
283
1066000
2000
18:06
where you had these two atoms, they're close together,
284
1068000
2000
18:08
and the electrons are moving around. That tiny force is sufficient
285
1070000
3000
18:11
to allow them to do that because it's added up so many times
286
1073000
3000
18:14
with these small structures.
287
1076000
3000
18:17
What we're doing is, we're taking that inspiration of the hairs,
288
1079000
5000
18:22
and with another colleague at Berkeley, we're manufacturing them.
289
1084000
5000
18:27
And just recently we've made a breakthrough, where we now believe
290
1089000
3000
18:30
we're going to be able to create the first synthetic, self-cleaning,
291
1092000
5000
18:35
dry adhesive. Many companies are interested in this.
292
1097000
5000
18:40
(Laughter)
293
1102000
3000
18:43
We also presented to Nike even.
294
1105000
2000
18:45
(Laughter)
295
1107000
3000
18:48
(Applause)
296
1110000
6000
18:54
We'll see where this goes. We were so excited about this
297
1116000
3000
18:57
that we realized that that small-size scale --
298
1119000
3000
19:00
and where everything gets sticky, and gravity doesn't matter anymore --
299
1122000
3000
19:03
we needed to look at ants and their feet, because
300
1125000
3000
19:06
one of my other colleagues at Berkeley has built a six-millimeter silicone
301
1128000
5000
19:11
robot with legs. But it gets stuck. It doesn't move very well.
302
1133000
3000
19:14
But the ants do, and we'll figure out why, so that ultimately
303
1136000
3000
19:17
we'll make this move. And imagine: you're going to be able
304
1139000
3000
19:20
to have swarms of these six-millimeter robots available to run around.
305
1142000
5000
19:25
Where's this going? I think you can see it already.
306
1147000
3000
19:28
Clearly, the Internet is already having eyes and ears,
307
1150000
4000
19:32
you have web cams and so forth. But it's going to also have legs and hands.
308
1154000
4000
19:36
You're going to be able to do programmable
309
1158000
2000
19:38
work through these kinds of robots, so that you can run,
310
1160000
4000
19:42
fly and swim anywhere. We saw David Kelly is at the beginning of that with his fish.
311
1164000
9000
19:51
So, in conclusion, I think the message is clear.
312
1173000
2000
19:53
If you need a message, if nature's not enough, if you care about
313
1175000
4000
19:57
search and rescue, or mine clearance, or medicine,
314
1179000
2000
19:59
or the various things we're working on, we must preserve
315
1181000
4000
20:03
nature's designs, otherwise these secrets will be lost forever.
316
1185000
4000
20:07
Thank you.
317
1189000
1000
20:08
(Applause)
318
1190000
9000

▲Back to top

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Robert Full - Biologist
Robert Full studies cockroach legs and gecko feet. His research is helping build tomorrow's robots, based on evolution's ancient engineering.

Why you should listen

UC Berkeley biologist Robert Full is fascinated by the motion of creatures like cockroaches, crabs and geckos having many legs, unusual feet or talented tails. He has led an effort to demonstrate the value of learning from Nature by the creating interdisciplinary collaborations of biologists, engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists from academia and industry. He founded CiBER, the Center for interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research, and the Poly-PEDAL Laboratory, which studies the Performance, Energetics and Dynamics of Animal Locomotion (PEDAL) in many-footed creatures (Poly).

His research shows how studying a diversity of animals leads to the discovery of general principles which inspire the design of novel circuits, artificial muscles, exoskeletons, versatile scampering legged search-and-rescue robots and synthetic self-cleaning dry adhesives based on gecko feet. He is passionate about discovery-based education leading to innovation -- and he even helped Pixar’s insect animations in the film A Bug's Life.

More profile about the speaker
Robert Full | Speaker | TED.com