Page 163 - Biomimetics: Technology Imitates Nature

Harun Yahya

Robotics Is Imitating Snakes to Overcome the Problem of
Balance

For those engaged in robotics, one of the problems they encounter
most frequently is maintaining equilibrium. Even robots equipped with
the very latest technology can lose their balance when walking. A three-
year-old child can manage to regain balance with no difficulty, yet robots
lacking this ability are, of necessity, stationary and of very little use. In
fact, one robot that NASA prepared for duty on the planet Mars couldn’t
be used at all, for that very reason. After that, robot experts abandoned at-
tempts to build a balance-establishing mechanism and instead looked to
a creature that never loses its balance—the snake.
Unlike other vertebrates, snakes lack a hard spine and limbs, and
have been created in such a way as to enter cracks and crevices. They can
expand and contract the diameter of their bodies, can cling to branches
and glide over rocks. Snakes’ properties inspired for a new robotic, inter-
planetary probe developed by NASA's Ames Research Center which they

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