Unconventional perspectives

Citation

Loughlin, C. (2007), "Unconventional perspectives", Industrial Robot, Vol. 34 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2007.04934daa.001

Unconventional perspectives

When I started in robotics about 30 years ago, you only came across the very occasional paper extolling the merits of organic joints and mechanisms and those who promoted them were regarded with fond indifference. Their rather weird ideas were viewed much as you would a Heath Robinson contraption of no possible practical use. Besides – those were exciting times and great progress was being made – we could do anything we wanted – or thought we could.

These days we are much more appreciative of the incredible mechanisms and structures that evolution has created and as time moves on I for one get the feeling that the more we learn about natural phenomena, the more we realize just how simplistic are our own efforts.

Nature has us beat at almost every scale. The biggest thing we can do is probably a nuclear explosion, but even this is insignificant compared with routine astronomical activities. We probably do have just about enough nuclear explosive devices to destroy the planet, but this could also be achieved in an instant by a relative small wayward asteroid. In fact by amazing serendipity, a news story has just flashed up on my PC announcing the expected arrival on 13 April 2036 of the 20 million tons asteroid Apophis. Fortunately, it is not a Friday and so the chances are stacked in our favour on this occasion.

On a smaller scale, we have almost no effect on the weather and tides, at least not in a way that can be considered “controlled”. It is only when you get down to the level of buildings and automobiles that we seem to be able to compete with nature. Once you go much smaller than a person nature again takes over. Even the semiconductor processors of which we seem so proud are humbled by our own brains. Go smaller still and we are threatened by viruses that can mutate and outwit our finest scientist.

So – what are we good for? How about the wheel? Wrong! – the bacterial flagellar motor has been around longer than we have and rotates at more than 100 revolutions per second.

These days biomimetic research (p. 270) and genetic algorithms are beginning to gain academic acceptance. Robotic muscles now strive to emulate biological structures rather than overpower them with brute force and cogged ignorance. “Conventional” mechanisms and materials may have taken us just about as far as they are going to and perhaps now is the time to consider unconventional approaches – after all – they have been around far longer.

Clive Loughlin