Robo Lobster in the News

Artist's rendition of
Robo Lobster (lower right)
among brethren.

The Economist magazine featured my beloved Robo Lobster on the cover of its "Technology Quarterly" insert this week. An artist's rendition of Robolobbie showed him surrounded by zoological illustrations of more traditional crustaceans. Incidentally, there are at least two versions of the Robo Lobster concept being developed in the world of esoteric robotic research. The version pictured here -- with legs -- gets a brief cameo in THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS. There is another version with wheels instead, which is featured in greater depth in my book.

As you might guess from the cover, The Economist's theme here was "biomimetics" -- technology that borrows from nature. Velcro being perhaps the most ubiquitous example. The Swiss inventor of Velcro, George de Mestral, came up with the idea for it one day after walking his dog, when he examined the burdock seeds that had attached themselves to his dog's fur using an ingenious hook-and-loop mechanism.

Robo Lobster in the, er, flesh.
(photo: Office of Naval Research
Press Office)

In THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS I tell one particular tale of robotic lobster research; more on that story as well as details from other robotic lobster projects are described in an excellent article on the University of California Science Notes website, here. "Our robotic lobster," says Dr. Joe Ayers of Northeastern University, which receives funding for Robo Lobster research from the Pentagon, "should be able to do all these things a real lobster does -- except have sex."

To anyone who has read THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS, that will seem a serious shortcoming indeed.