This Week in Bionically Enhanced Critters
As loyal longtime readers of RobotCentral already know, on Mondays we like to review the week’s advances in robotic animal parts. This past week had some truly exciting and disturbing developments.
Our robotic ornithologist readers will appreciate that Beauty the Bald Eagle will soon have a new bionic beak. Idaho Biologist Jane Cantwell has spent two years building an artificial beak for Beauty, whose original beak was surgically removed by a cloud of flying buckshot. Two years on a beak for one bird. Probably took so long because she’s a biologist- any random person at Maker Faire could do it in a week. Made of nylon composites, the beak will be glued onto Beauty’s face. Which will then almost immediately fall off, and will be reattached with either snout-grade scotch tape or some of that blue sticky stuff you put your Iron Maiden posters up with. Beauty’s first intended use of her new Death Beak will be on the mighty hunter that removed her original one.
Moving on to our ground-based, nut-hoarding friends. Rocky the RoboSquirrel has successfully infiltrated the local herd of meat squirrels (swarm of squirrels? flock? coven??) at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. Assistant Professor of Otter and Muskrat Sociological Studies Susan Partan is hoping to understand how the squirrels communicate, work in groups, and avoid danger. Rocky was built by students and can wag his tail, bark, and run under car wheels for no particular reason. The students developed the complex programming for Rocky in Squeak. Variant of Smalltalk. Created at PARC. No? Too obscure?
Finally, we move to the ocean. Winter the Stumpy Dolphin is getting what they are calling a “bionic tail” to replace her original, lost in a crab trap. But being that I live just a few miles from Winter’s current residence at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, I am on to their charade! I have seen Winter and her bionic tail and it is just a prosthetic piece of plastic. No gears, no servos, no atomic power packs. Although I have been told by Winter’s handler that the technology that went into Winter’s new tail has directly helped development of improved prosthetics for Iraqi war veterans. And a more advanced SuperTail is in the works. Perhaps with sockets for some friggin’ lasers.
Next week- Robotic Cow Tongues. Or, maybe not.
Oh, and this just in- I am being told that it is a “”dray of squirrels”. Dray. Interesting.
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