Hasta La Ideas

When it comes to biomimetic design, one trend is for researchers to borrow ideas from bugs and animals to apply to locomotion. This has yielded some truly freaky free-roaming robots, based on everything from fleas to snakes to centaurs. But industrial automation company Festo is applying one animal’s qualities to a robot that will stay right where I want it: Bolted to the floor of a factory.

For two years, Festo’s Bionic Learning Network team has been studying the kangaroo, and specifically the way it jumps, in an effort to understand energy recovery. A kangaroo is able to hop across large swaths of the Australian outback at 15 miles per hour in an energy-efficient way, storing energy on the landing that it can re-release for the next jump. The thinking is that if an industrial robot could similarly store and release energy with each stroke, as it swings back and forth on a production line, a significant energy savings could be achieved.

This month the researchers have unveiled their BionicKangaroo as a proof-of-concept. Interestingly enough, it involves what amounts to large rubber bands that are loaded on each stroke by motors in the hips, and the powered tail itself serves as an additional limb by providing both tripod-like support and balance during jumps:

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