I just stumbled upon a research project that's as bizarre as it is brilliant. there I read that scientists have developed a robotic gripper using discarded langoustine tails. isn't it interesting? By combining the natural chitin exoskeleton with soft elastomers, they’ve built a functional manipulator that’s both sustainable and surprisingly effective at handling delicate objects.
This concept of 'Necrobotics' (like the mechanical use of spider legs we saw a while back) opens up some wild questions:
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How far can bio-derived materials actually go? Could we see 'grown' or 'recycled biological' parts in commercial robots?
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Are there cases where natural structures (like the hinge of a shell or the flexibility of a tail) simply outperform our best-engineered hinges?
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Durability and rot are the obvious issues. How do we solve for environmental sensitivity and repeatability before this leaves the lab?
I’d love to hear from the engineers and makers here. Is this just a lab novelty, or could we one day be 3D printing 'bio-hybrid' parts for our hobbyist projects?
