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The purpose of this paper is to acquaint a wide audience of readers with some of the unique remote sensing and navigation capabilities of animals.

Biomimetic comparison of remote sensors evolved by animals and sensors designed by man. The study and comparison includes thermal infrared sensors used by snakes, echolocation used by bats and dolphins, and navigation methods used by birds. Countermeasures used by prey to avoid capture are also considered.

Some animals have remote sensing and navigation capabilities that are considerably more efficient than those provided by the human body or designed by man.

Sensor designers may be encouraged to use the biometic approach in the design of new sensors.

The paper provides a better understanding of animal behaviour, especially their unique abilities to remotely sense, echolocate and navigate with high accuracy over considerable distances.

The paper presents a comparison of remote sensors used by animals with those developed by humans. Remote sensor designers can learn to improve their sensor designs by studying animal sensors within a biomimetic framework.

Snake-inspired robots are of great significance in many fields because of their great adaptability to the environment. This paper aims to systematically illustrate the research progress of snake-inspired robots according to their application environments. It classifies snake-inspired robots according to the numbers of degrees of freedom in each joint and briefly describes the modeling and control of snake-inspired robots. Finally, the application fields and future development trends of snake-inspired robots are analyzed and discussed.

This paper summarizes the research progress of snake-inspired robots and clarifies the requirements of snake-inspired robots for self-adaptive environments and multi-functional tasks. By equipping various sensors and tool modules, snake-inspired robots are developed from fixed-point operation in a single environment to autonomous operation in an amphibious environment. Finally, it is pointed out that snake-inspired robots will be developed in terms of rigid and flexible deformable structure, long endurance and multi-function and intelligent autonomous control.

Inspired by the modular and reconfigurable concepts of biological snakes, snake-inspired robots are well adapted to unknown and changing environments. Therefore, snake-inspired robots will be widely used in industrial, military, medical, post-disaster search and rescue applications. Snake-inspired robots have become a hot research topic in the field of bionic robots.

This paper summarizes the research status of snake-inspired robots, which facilitates the reader to be a comprehensive and systematic understanding of the research progress of snake-inspired robots. This helps the reader to gain inspiration from biological perspectives.

Early detection of forest fires offers the chance to put the fire out before it gets out of control. The purpose of this paper is to look into nature and to learn how certain insects detect remote forest fires. A small group of highly specialized insects that have been called pyrophilous is attracted by forest fires and approaches fires sometimes from distances of many kilometers. As a unique feature some of these insects are equipped with infrared (IR) receptors, which in case of two species of jewel beetles (family Buprestidae) are used for fire detection.

The paper has investigated the IR receptors of the pyrophilous beetles with various morphological techniques including scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, neuroanatomy and the paper also investigated the thermo-/mechanical properties of the IR receptors by nanoindentation. Data were used for subsequent modeling of a biomimetic technical sensor. Finally, a macroscopic prototype was built and tested.

This biological principle was transferred into a new kind of uncooled technical IR receptor. A simple model for this biological IR sensor is a modified Golay sensor in which the gas has been replaced by a liquid. Here, the absorbed IR radiation results in a pressure increase of the liquid and the deflection of a thin membrane. For the evaluation of this model, analytical formulas are presented, which permits the calculation of the pressure increase in the cavity, the deformation of the membrane and the time constant of an artificial leak to compensate ambient temperature changes. Some organic liquids with high thermal expansion coefficients may improve the deflection of the membrane compared to water.

Results so far obtained suggest that it seems promising to take the photomechanic IR receptors of pyrophilous jewel beetles as models for the building of new uncooled IR sensors. The beetle receptors have been shaped by evolution since thousands of years and, therefore, can be considered as highly optimized sources of inspiration for new technical sensors suitable for remote fire detection.

This paper aims to provide details of recent snake robot research, products and applications.

Following a short introduction to snake robots, this paper considers a selection of key research activities and then describes a number of commercial products. Examples of applications are then provided and are followed by brief conclusions.

In contrast to many other classes of robots, snake robots are being studied by only a relatively small number of academic groups. Despite their unique abilities, commercialisation has so far been very limited. Real and potential applications exist in fields that include the nuclear power sector, security and defence, aerospace, oil and gas, civil engineering and urban search and rescue.

This paper reviews the preset-day status of snake robot research and provides details of commercial products and their applications.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how biomimetics can be applied in sensor design. Biomimetics is an engineering discipline that uses nature as an inspiration source for generating ideas for how to solve engineering problems. The paper reviews a number of biomimetic studies of sense organs in animals and illustrates how a formal search method developed at University of Toronto can be applied to sensor design.

Using biomimetics involves a search for relevant cases, a proper analysis of the biological solutions, identification of design principles and design of the desired artefact. The present search method is based on formulation of relevant keywords and search for occurrences in a standard university biology textbook. Most often a simple formulation of keywords and a following search is not enough to generate a sufficient amount of useful ideas or the search gives too many results. This is handled by a more advanced search strategy where the search is either widened or it is focused further mainly using biological synonyms.

A major problem in biomimetic design is finding the relevant analogies to actual design tasks in nature.

Biomimetics can be a challenge to engineers due to the terminology from another scientific discipline.

Using a formalised search method is a way of solving the problem of finding the relevant biological analogies.

The paper is of value as most present biomimetic research is focused on the understanding of biological phenomena and does not have as much focus on the engineering design challenges.

After a building collapse, people buried alive have to be localized and rescued. This requires the damage site's inspection and surveillance. These tasks are dangerous and challenging due to the area's hard‐to‐reach and hazardous environment. The damage site cannot be actively entered but must be inspected from a safe distance. In this context, mobile robots gain in importance as they can be operated semi‐autonomously or remote‐controlled without exposing the first responders to the risk. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel robot.

The novel robot introduced in this paper has a snake‐like build‐up, uses tracks and active flippers for locomotion and negotiates completely structured as well as extremely unstructured and rough terrain. The system's slender, segmented and modular structure is actively articulated by the use of overall 30 degrees‐of‐freedom, which allow the robot's flexible adaptation to a given terrain. System‐terrain‐interaction is detected by the use of an innovative, RFID‐based sensory integrated in the system's tracks.

The paper presents the mobile robot's basic features, as well as first experimental results for semi‐autonomy and tele‐operation.

The introduced robot stands out due to its high locomotion and mobility capabilities.

This paper aims to concentrate on recent innovations in flexible wearable sensor technology tailored for monitoring vital signals within the contexts of wearable sensors and systems developed specifically for monitoring health and fitness metrics.

In recent decades, wearable sensors for monitoring vital signals in sports and health have advanced greatly. Vital signals include electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram, electromyography, inertial data, body motions, cardiac rate and bodily fluids like blood and sweating, making them a good choice for sensing devices.

This report reviewed reputable journal articles on wearable sensors for vital signal monitoring, focusing on multimode and integrated multi-dimensional capabilities like structure, accuracy and nature of the devices, which may offer a more versatile and comprehensive solution.

The paper provides essential information on the present obstacles and challenges in this domain and provide a glimpse into the future directions of wearable sensors for the detection of these crucial signals. Importantly, it is evident that the integration of modern fabricating techniques, stretchable electronic devices, the Internet of Things and the application of artificial intelligence algorithms has significantly improved the capacity to efficiently monitor and leverage these signals for human health monitoring, including disease prediction.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the reviews of past research work on various in-pipe robotic systems and their operations. This investigation has been focussed on the implemented methodologies for performing in-pipe cleaning and inspection tasks.

This work has been concentrated on review of various sensors used in robots to perform in-pipes inspection operation for determining flaws/cracks, corrosion-affected areas, blocks and coated paint thickness. Various actuators like DC motors, servo motors, pneumatic operated and hydraulic operated are discussed in this review analysis to control the motion of various mechanical components of the robot.

In the current analysis, categorisation of various pipe cleaning robots according to their mechanical structure has been addressed. A lot of information has been gathered regarding the control of in-pipe robots for performing inspection and cleaning tasks.

In this paper, various in-pipe cleaning and inspection techniques have been studied. Necessary information provided regarding different types of in-pipe robots like PIG, wall-pressed, walking, wheel and inchworm. This investigation provides a through literature on various types of sensors like ultrasonic, magnetic, touch, light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, X-ray, etc., that have been used for inspection and detection of flaws in the pipe.

This paper aims to provide an insight into recent biomimetic sensor developments.

Following a brief introduction, this paper considers a number of specific sensor R&D activities which involve the use of differing biomimetic concepts, including the fabrication of artificial sensing organs, emulating human senses, novel uses of biological structures and systems exploiting biologically‐inspired behaviour.

This paper shows that a range of different biomimetic design concepts are being applied to sensors that respond to a range of physical, gaseous and chemical variables. Robust, multi‐sensor systems are being developed which emulate biologically‐inspired behaviour.

This paper provides an up to date technical review of a range of differing biomimetic sensor designs and concepts.

This study aims to investigate locomotion mechanisms of different urban search and rescue (USAR) robots currently being researched or commercially available on the market.

USAR robots are categorized by the type of their mobility. Detailed illustration and analysis have been given for each USAR robot in the paper.

The paper finds that none of current USAR robots can practically and autonomously carry out rescue work in a complex and unstructured environment. Hence, responding to the practical requirements of highly challenging USAR tasks, a team of USAR robots based on different locomotion mechanisms may be a good solution to undertake rescue activities.

The paper provides guidance in the design of future USAR robots.

The paper investigates locomotion mechanisms of different USAR robots in detail.