A seahorse tail’s exceptional flexibility is due to its structure, made up of bony, armored plates, which slide past each other. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, are hoping to use a similar structure to create a flexible robotic arm equipped with muscles made out of polymer, which could be used in medical devices, underwater exploration and unmanned bomb detection and detonation.
The final goal is to build a robotic arm that would be a unique hybrid between hard and soft robotic devices.
Also: Learn about an arm-mounted percussive coring tool.
Transcript
00:00:00 seahorses are unique in that they have a head like a horse a long tubular snout like an an eater prehensile tail like a monkey a broad pouch like a kangaroo camouflage skin like a flounder and eyes that move independently like a chameleon we study the prehensile tail because it's uh gripping and grasping ability and it's protected by the natural armor so the tail is composed of four bony
00:00:23 plates that surround a central vertebrae and uh what's unique about this is that the Bony plates uh have the sliding mechanisms where they are able to slide in and out of each other as all the segments are connected it allows the tail to be able to bend and twist and then also in deoration the plates can slide past each other like this which protects the central vertebrae from
00:00:47 being compressed that sliding mechanism is what gives the tail its prehensile capability and also its ability to twist and bend so the tail can be compressed to half of its thickness without the vertebrae actually fracturing no one's really looked at the tail and the bones in particular as a source of armor most seahorse Predators capture their prey by crushing crabs using claws fish and
00:01:09 turtles using beaks Rays using crushing plates this helps protect the seahorse from its natural predators [Music]
