Monday, July 6, 2015., According to a new study reported Thursday in the journal Science, researchers get inspired from a seahorse tail which led to the big breakthrough in robotics, defense systems and biomedicine.
The study reported outlines the virtues of the seahorse’s unusual skeletal structure, including a tail in which a vertebral column is surrounded by square bony plates. These systems may soon help create technology that offers new approaches to surgery, search and rescue missions or industrial applications.
Seahorse tails are organized into square prisms surrounded by bony plates that are connected by joints. Almost all the other creatures have cylindrical tails. Square tails with overlapping segments helps for better armor than a cylindrical tail. These tails provide a strong, energy-efficient grasping mechanism to cling to things such as seaweed or coral reefs, waiting for food to float by that it can suck into its mouth. Also, the square plates make the seahorse’s tail stiffer, stronger and more resistant to strain.
The seahorse’s tail is typically made up of about 36 square-like segments, each composed of four L-shaped corner plates that progressively decrease in size along the length of the tail. The plates are free to glide or pivot. Gliding joints allow the bony plates to slide past one another. Pivoting joints are similar to ball-and-socket joints, with three degrees of rotational freedom. The plates are connected to the vertebrae by thick collagen layers of connective tissue. The joints between plates and vertebrae are extremely flexible with nearly six degrees of freedom.
The flexible tail can help the seahorse to easily bend and twist, and naturally returns to its former shape better than animals with cylindrical tails. This helps the seahorse hide, easily bide its time while food floats to it, and it provides excellent crushing resistance – making the animal difficult for predators to eat.
Researchers wanted to know whether the square-prism shape gives seahorse tails a functional advantage. To find out, the team created a 3D-printed model that mimicked the square prism of a seahorse tail and a hypothetical version that was cylindrical. Then researchers whacked the models with a rubber mallet and twisted and bent them.
Researchers found that the square prototype was stiffer, stronger and more resilient than the circular one when crushed. The square prototype was about half as able to twist, a restriction that could prevent damage to the seahorse and give it better control when it grabs things.
Both prototypes could bend about 90 degrees, although the cylindrical version was slightly less restricted. The researchers said the seahorse tail could inspire new forms of armor.
This could be very useful for robotics applications that need to be strong, but also energy-efficient and able to bend and twist in tight spaces. Thus it leads to search-and-rescue robots that move on the ground like a snake and are able to contract to fit into tight spaces.
Such applications, might include laparoscopic surgery, in which a robotic device could offer enhanced control and flexibility as it enters a body, moves around organs and bones, and then has the strength to accomplish a surgical task.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isy4Bk4jako
For years, engineers have been taking inspiration from nature to design new technologies. This study did that, but took things a step further. Researchers used engineering to learn more about nature.
New technologies, such as 3D printing, allow researchers “to build idealized models of natural systems to better understand their different functions”.
“This study demonstrates that engineering designs are convenient means to answer elusive biological questions when biological data are nonexistent or difficult to obtain,” researchers wrote in the article. “In addition, understanding the role of mechanics in these biologically inspired designs may help engineers to develop seahorse-inspired technologies for a variety of applications in robotics, defense systems, or biomedicine.”
