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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the keep-going-and-going-and-going dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Anyone who's tried to kill a cockroach knows that the ancient pests have some world-class evasive maneuvers. Or at least they appear to.

The agility of cockroaches may owe less to lightning-fast reflexes and fancy footwork than their tough, shock-absorbent bodies. According to a new study, American cockroaches can run full-speed into walls and other obstacles because their exoskeletons allow them to recover quickly with hardly any loss in momentum.

"Their bodies are doing the computing, not their brains or complex sensors," said Kaushik Jayaram, a biologist at Harvard University and lead author of the study, which was published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

The findings -which were further validated by a tiny, cockroach-sized robot - could influence the design of the next generation of robots that run, jump and fly.


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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:40PM (1 child)

    by looorg (578) on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:40PM (#638225)

    Ever wonder why Elon sold all those flame throwers? You don't really have to hit them head on and fire is the only way to be certain.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @04:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @04:40PM (#638281)

    Shoot a nuke down a bug hole, you've got a lot of dead bugs.