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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: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:31AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:31AM (#638126)

    Also, they survive nuking from the orbit.

    • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:37AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:37AM (#638128)

      The man placed the baby in the file cabinet drawer such that roughly half of its head was sticking out. Next, the man tried closing the file cabinet, only to encounter resistance. Anger. "How dare this insolent insect stop me from closing the drawer!" he thought. He pushed harder. The baby screamed. The level of force exerted by the man gradually increased, and so too did the volume of the baby's screams. Push. Scream. Push. Scream. Push. Scream. Finally, it broke. Silence. Total silence. It was music to the man's ears.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:56AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:56AM (#638131)

    Seem like a noble goal. Perhaps we name this project Skynet?

  • (Score: -1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @08:30AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @08:30AM (#638139)

    *yawn*. Useless "research" that adds no real insight to this world. Probably another of those "publish or perish" crap. Obvious from stuff known ages ago - small creatures like insects don't have to worry about much when they bump into things or even fall.

    "Their bodies are doing the computing,

    Nice spin for "When in danger, head roughly in the other direction, hit the throttle and hope for the best".

    Doesn't scale for larger stuff e.g. good luck using this for self-driving cars.

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 15 2018, @09:17AM (1 child)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday February 15 2018, @09:17AM (#638152) Journal

      Well, depends on what you want. If you are happy with just the car surviving, the strategy may indeed work. If you also want anything in the way of the car to survive, you probably want to employ a more sophisticated control.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:44PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:44PM (#638402)

        Well, depends on what you want

        I want you to try the cockroach method in your car and let your car body do the computing.

  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday February 15 2018, @08:55AM

    by MostCynical (2589) on Thursday February 15 2018, @08:55AM (#638146) Journal

    the goal now is *not* to avoid obstacles, but to make things that can survive lots of impacts.

    Tl;dr: Cockroaches are not like NFL* players

    *or any type of rugby, or AFL, ultimate fighters or boxers.

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @09:07AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @09:07AM (#638149)

    Cock-a-rooches.... always seem to get into the kitchen, to be discovered when doing a frig raid.

    You know those things are covered with infrared sensors... they see you preparing to stomp and they skedaddle under impossible little cracks.

    Tip... hold a large mouthed cup or jar over them and slowly lower. The thing won't see your hand's infrared signature, as the jar/cup is shielding your infrared emissions from it. Once you have the thing trapped, you can then use a sheet of thin cardboard, slip under the jar, and carry the trapped critter outside, or to the toilet.

    Should you choose the toilet, be sure to squirt a little hand soap in the bowl to mess up the surface tension. Put some on the bug too for guaranteed result of bye bye bug. Those things crawl right out of toilet bowls if you don't soap 'em.

    Offtopic as hell, but I am sharing how I deal with those pesky bugs.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @09:11AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @09:11AM (#638150)

      So what you are saying, if I read it right, is that when the boffins design the mini-robots to attack us in our own domiciles, all we need to fight back is a glass jar, cardboard, and some washing-up fluid? Was not this already covered in "The Fifth Element", but all we need is a shoe, and a Fifth Element?

      • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday February 15 2018, @03:46PM

        by Freeman (732) on Thursday February 15 2018, @03:46PM (#638261) Journal

        Much simpler and less likely to fail. Make sure to clean up the mess afterward with a clorox wipe or something, too.

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @06:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @06:36PM (#638360)

      supposedly they can eat anything "man-made" but normally cock-a-roach (and ants) only do what
      they are supposed to do:"clean up".
      i get them if i get careless in the kitchen.
      the little cleaning nano bots are totally giving romba a run for the money: free and self-multiplying.
      anyways, after cleaning up the careless-ness around them critters, they mostly disappear after 30 min
      to some other place that needs cleaning (*).

      as for cock-a-roach, they feel most at home under fallen leaves. their "poop" is like a micro sponge and really good at giving
      "clay" soil more water retaining capabilities.
      thus it is recommended to pile fallen leaves in a dark, dampish corner of the garden and populate with cock-a-roaches.
      in 3-6 month the top part of piled fallen leaves can be removed and the micro-sponges can be mixed with regular dirt
      for most excellent spongy salad food.

      (*) it is most ev1l to entice them to your home by being messy and then killing them with poison!
      they are doing what nature (or god, if you believe in such things) intended them to be doing!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:38PM (#638398)

      My house contains:

      1. the ensign wasp, Evania appendigaster, which is a parasite of cockroach egg cases

      2. wolf spiders, sometimes reaching 2 inches in diameter counting the legs

      3. large ants (they seem to defend food or hiding places from cockroaches)

      4. the occasional lizard or frog

      I need to add snakes, scorpions, and centipedes. Compatibility is a concern; some predators might eat each other.

  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:31PM

    by Bot (3902) on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:31PM (#638221) Journal

    Get an exoskeleton, they said,
    you'll look great in an exoskeleton, they said...

    --
    Account abandoned.
  • (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.

    • (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.

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday February 15 2018, @06:37PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 15 2018, @06:37PM (#638361) Journal

    I don't think this approach would work for anything very large...unless it was also *extremely* light. it's true that momentum is only linear with mass, but it's also linear with velocity, and since larger things need to move faster, there's essentially a square factor in the scaling. If you moved at the speed of a fast cockroach, you'd be moving pretty slowly. (Admittedly, it's difficult to time how long it would take a cockroach to run a mile.)

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
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