Welcome. If I could have the first slide, please? Contrary to calculations made by some engineers, bees can fly, dolphins can swim, and geckos can even climb up the smoothest surfaces. Now, what I want to do, in the short time I have, is to try to allow each of you to experience the thrill of revealing nature's design. I get to do this all the time, and it's just incredible. I want to try to share just a little bit of that with you in this presentation. The challenge of looking at nature's designs -- and I'll tell you the way that we perceive it, and the way we've used it. The challenge, of course, is to answer this question: what permits this extraordinary performance of animals that allows them basically to go anywhere? And if we could figure that out, how can we implement those designs?
歡迎光臨。可以幫我放第一張幻燈片嗎? 跟一些工程師的計算相反 蜜蜂能飛, 海豚可以游泳,壁虎甚至可以在 光滑的表面上爬行。現在, 在這很短的時間內, 我想做的事, 就便是要盡量讓你們每人去體驗一下, 一點點,揭示大自然設計的快感。 我常常會做這種揭示,它確實是令人難以置信。 我想在此介紹給你們分享一下。 我們觀看大自然的設計所面臨的挑戰 -- 我會告訴你我們觀察的方式,以及我們用它的方式。 當然, 我們面臨的挑戰,就是要回答這個問題: 是什麼讓動物具有這不平凡的性能, 使他們基本上可以去任何地方? 並且如果我們能明白這一點,我們怎麼能實現這些設計?
Well, many biologists will tell engineers, and others, organisms have millions of years to get it right; they're spectacular; they can do everything wonderfully well. So, the answer is bio-mimicry: just copy nature directly. We know from working on animals that the truth is that's exactly what you don't want to do -- because evolution works on the just-good-enough principle, not on a perfecting principle. And the constraints in building any organism, when you look at it, are really severe. Natural technologies have incredible constraints. Think about it. If you were an engineer and I told you that you had to build an automobile, but it had to start off to be this big, then it had to grow to be full size and had to work every step along the way. Or think about the fact that if you build an automobile, I'll tell you that you also -- inside it -- have to put a factory that allows you to make another automobile.
許多生物學家會告訴工程師和其他人, 生物有百萬年才能改進得到這些功能, 牠們是了不起,牠們能順當的做一切事情。 因此,答案是仿生學 -- 只需直接複製大自然。 我們從在動物的工作知道, 事實上這正是你不應做的方法。因為進化工程的原則 是剛剛夠用就好,而不是一個完美式的原則。 而在建築任何生物體的限制 其實是相當嚴格的。大自然的技術有令人難以置信的限制。 想想看。如果你是一名工程師,我告訴你, 你必須建造一輛汽車,但它一開始必須這麼大, 接著它必須充分成長,並且每一步都需運作順利。 想想看,你若建成這輛汽車, 其實我需要你 在它裡面建立一個工廠來生產更多的汽車。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And you can absolutely never, absolutely never, because of history and the inherited plan, start with a clean slate. So, organisms have this important history. Really evolution works more like a tinkerer than an engineer. And this is really important when you begin to look at animals. Instead, we believe you need to be inspired by biology. You need to discover the general principles of nature, and then use these analogies when they're advantageous. This is a real challenge to do this, because animals, when you start to really look inside them -- how they work -- appear hopelessly complex. There's no detailed history of the design plans, you can't go look it up anywhere. They have way too many motions for their joints, too many muscles. Even the simplest animal we think of, something like an insect, and they have more neurons and connections than you can imagine.
而且,你不可以,絕不可以,因為歷史和 繼承的計劃,從零開始。 因此, 生物體有這個重要的歷史。 真正的, 進化工程更像是一個熔補器。 而當你開始看動物, 這是非常重要的。 相反,我們相信你們需要得到生物學的啟發。 你需要去發現大自然的一般原則, 然後當在有利的時刻運用這些比喻。 這樣做是一個真正的挑戰,因為動物, 當你開始真正觀察牠們,牠們是如何運作時, 呈現絕望的複雜程度。沒有詳細的 設計方案歷史,你亦無從考究。 牠們的關節有太多的動作,太多肌肉, 連我們想到最簡單的動物,類似昆蟲, 牠們亦有比你想像中更多的神經元和連接。
How can you make sense of this? Well, we believed -- and we hypothesized -- that one way animals could work simply, is if the control of their movements tended to be built into their bodies themselves. What we discovered was that two-, four-, six- and eight-legged animals all produce the same forces on the ground when they move. They all work like this kangaroo, they bounce. And they can be modeled by a spring-mass system that we call the spring mass system because we're biomechanists. It's actually a pogo stick. They all produce the pattern of a pogo stick. How is that true? Well, a human, one of your legs works like two legs of a trotting dog, or works like three legs, together as one, of a trotting insect, or four legs as one of a trotting crab. And then they alternate in their propulsion, but the patterns are all the same. Almost every organism we've looked at this way -- you'll see next week, I'll give you a hint, there'll be an article coming out that says that really big things like T. rex probably couldn't do this, but you'll see that next week.
你怎麼能理出頭緒?我們相信 -- 及假設 -- 即是, 動物可以簡單地運作的一種方法, 便是如果控制牠們行動的機能 是建在本來身體的一部分。 我們發現,當二,四,六,八足動物 在地面上移動, 都是產生相同的力量。 牠們都像這頭袋鼠,會彈跳。 牠們可以模擬彈簧系統,因為我們是生物力學家, 我們稱之為諧振子系統,它實際上是一個彈簧單高蹺。 他們都複製彈簧單高蹺的模式。爲什麽? 一個人,你的一條腿,運作像一隻兩條腿跑著的小狗, 或像三足聯為一體的小昆蟲, 或像四腿為一的小蟹。 然後牠們在交替推進動力, 但模式都是一樣。幾乎我們已經研究了的每一個有機體都是這種方式 -- 你下一個星期會看到 -- 我給你一個提示, 將有一篇文章登出,指出真正大的動物 像霸王龍便無法這樣做,你下一個星期便會看到。
Now, what's interesting is the animals, then -- we said -- bounce along the vertical plane this way, and in our collaborations with Pixar, in "A Bug's Life," we discussed the bipedal nature of the characters of the ants. And we told them, of course, they move in another plane as well. And they asked us this question. They say, "Why model just in the sagittal plane or the vertical plane, when you're telling us these animals are moving in the horizontal plane?" This is a good question. Nobody in biology ever modeled it this way. We took their advice and we modeled the animals moving in the horizontal plane as well. We took their three legs, we collapsed them down as one. We got some of the best mathematicians in the world from Princeton to work on this problem. And we were able to create a model where animals are not only bouncing up and down, but they're also bouncing side to side at the same time. And many organisms fit this kind of pattern. Now, why is this important to have this model? Because it's very interesting. When you take this model and you perturb it, you give it a push, as it bumps into something, it self-stabilizes, with no brain or no reflexes, just by the structure alone. It's a beautiful model. Let's look at the mathematics.
現在有趣的是, 我們說的動物這樣 反彈沿垂直面,而在我們與皮克斯動畫工作室 合作的“蟲蟲危機”,我們便討論了 螞蟻的雙足性質。 我們告訴他們,牠們當然能在另一個水平面行動, 他們問我們這個問題。他們問,“當你告訴我們這些動物 是在水平移動, 那為什麼動物的模型只是在矢狀平面 或垂直平面上?” 這是一個很好的問題。 沒有人在生物學曾經採用這種方式模擬模型。 我們採取他們的意見, 將動物模擬 運動在水平面上。我們採取了牠們的三隻腳, 將牠塌下成為一隻, 我們採用了一些在世界上最好的數學家, 從普林斯頓大學, 努力在這方面的問題。 而我們成功建立了一個模型, 動物不僅上下彈跳, 牠們也能在同一時間一邊彈跳到另一邊。 而許多生物都適合這種模式。 那, 為什麼需要有這種模型? 因為它很有趣。當你把這個模型, 你擾動它,你給它一推, 因它碰到東西,它會自我穩定,不需要大腦, 無反射,只是純粹的結構。 這是一個美麗的模型。讓我們看看數學。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
That's enough!
好了。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
The animals, when you look at them running, appear to be self-stabilizing like this, using basically springy legs. That is, the legs can do computations on their own; the control algorithms, in a sense, are embedded in the form of the animal itself. Why haven't we been more inspired by nature and these kinds of discoveries? Well, I would argue that human technologies are really different from natural technologies, at least they have been so far. Think about the typical kind of robot that you see. Human technologies have tended to be large, flat, with right angles, stiff, made of metal. They have rolling devices and axles. There are very few motors, very few sensors. Whereas nature tends to be small, and curved, and it bends and twists, and has legs instead, and appendages, and has many muscles and many, many sensors. So it's a very different design. However, what's changing, what's really exciting -- and I'll show you some of that next -- is that as human technology takes on more of the characteristics of nature, then nature really can become a much more useful teacher.
這些動物,當你看牠們跑, 似乎這樣的自我穩定, 採用基本上彈性的腿。也就是說,腿可以 自行計算,在一定意義上控制算法 是嵌入動物本身的形式。 為什麼我們沒有從大自然或這些發現中得到更多的靈感? 我認為,人類的技術是真的不同於 自然的技術,至少到目前為止。 想想你看到的典型的機器人。 人類的科技往往要大,平坦, 有直角,僵硬,金屬製成。他們有著軋製設備 和車軸。很少電機,很少傳感器。 而大自然的往往是小,彎曲, 而且彎曲和扭曲,有著腿而不是和附屬物, 並有許多肌肉和許多,許多的傳感器。 所以這是一些非常不同的設計。然而,不斷變化的, 什麼是真正令人興奮的 -- 我接下來會告訴你 -- 就是當人類的科技需要更多的大自然的特性, 大自然真能成為一個更為有用的老師。
And here's one example that's really exciting. This is a collaboration we have with Stanford. And they developed this new technique, called Shape Deposition Manufacturing. It's a technique where they can mix materials together and mold any shape that they like, and put in the material properties. They can embed sensors and actuators right in the form itself. For example, here's a leg: the clear part is stiff, the white part is compliant, and you don't need any axles there or anything. It just bends by itself beautifully. So, you can put those properties in. It inspired them to show off this design by producing a little robot they named Sprawl. Our work has also inspired another robot, a biologically inspired bouncing robot, from the University of Michigan and McGill named RHex, for robot hexapod, and this one's autonomous. Let's go to the video, and let me show you some of these animals moving and then some of the simple robots that have been inspired by our discoveries. Here's what some of you did this morning, although you did it outside, not on a treadmill. Here's what we do.
而這裡便是一個實在是很令人興奮的例子。 這是我們與斯坦福大學的一個合作。 他們開發了的這種新技術, 稱為形狀沉積製造。 這是一種製造科技,他們可以將模具材料混合在一起, 鑄造他們喜歡的任何形狀,並能注入材料的性能。 他們可以在形式本身嵌入傳感器和執行器。 例如,這條腿 - -透明部分是僵硬, 白色部分是可彎曲的,你不需要有任何車軸或其他什麼東西。 它本身便會精美地彎曲。 所以,你可以把這些屬性嵌入。這啟發他們炫耀這種設計, 便製作了一個小機器人,他們命名為Sprawl (爬行)。 我們的工作也激發了另一個機器人的製作,一個生物啟發的彈跳機器人, 從密歇根大學和麥吉爾大學, 命名RHex,六足機器人,而這個機器人是獨立自主的。 讓我們看看視頻,讓我告訴你這些動物的一些動作功能。 然後, 一些應用我們靈感 所設計的簡單機器人。 以下你們今天上午所做的,雖然你在外面做, 而且沒有在跑步機上。 這是我們所做的
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
This is a death's head cockroach. This is an American cockroach you think you don't have in your kitchen. This is an eight-legged scorpion, six-legged ant, forty-four-legged centipede. Now, I said all these animals are sort of working like pogo sticks -- they're bouncing along as they move. And you can see that in this ghost crab, from the beaches of Panama and North Carolina. It goes up to four meters per second when it runs. It actually leaps into the air, and has aerial phases when it does it, like a horse, and you'll see it's bouncing here. What we discovered is whether you look at the leg of a human like Richard, or a cockroach, or a crab, or a kangaroo, the relative leg stiffness of that spring is the same for everything we've seen so far. Now, what good are springy legs then? What can they do? Well, we wanted to see if they allowed the animals to have greater stability and maneuverability. So, we built a terrain that had obstacles three times the hip height of the animals that we're looking at. And we were certain they couldn't do this. And here's what they did. The animal ran over it and it didn't even slow down! It didn't decrease its preferred speed at all. We couldn't believe that it could do this. It said to us that if you could build a robot with very simple, springy legs, you could make it as maneuverable as any that's ever been built.
這是一隻名叫"死亡的頭"的蟑螂 -- 這是你認為 在你的廚房沒有的美洲大蟑螂。 這是一隻八腳的蝎子,六條腿的螞蟻,44條腿的蜈蚣。 現在我說所有這些動物都有點像彈簧單高蹺的運作 -- 從在這巴拿馬海灘和北卡羅萊納州的鬼蟹 你可以看到,牠們移動沿著反彈。 當牠運行時上升至每秒四米。 牠實際上是跨越到空氣中, 像一匹馬,你會看到牠在這裡彈跳。 我們發現, 不論你是一個人的腿 像理查德的腿,或一隻蟑螂,或蟹,或袋鼠, 到我們現在所看到的, 相對腿部僵硬,跳躍是一切相同的。 那有彈性腿的話有什麼好,它們可以做什麼? 我們想看看它們能否讓動物 有更大的穩定性和機動性。 因此,我們建立了一個比我們研究的動物臀部 高三倍的有障礙的地形, 而我們肯定些牠們不能通過這些。這便是牠們所做的。 動物跑過去它,甚至沒有慢下來。 牠們並沒有減少速度。 我們無法相信牠可以做到這一點。這意味著, 如果你能建立一個具備非常簡單彈性腿的機器人, 你可以把它為機動性能開發到任何機器的運動功能。
Here's the first example of that. This is the Stanford Shape Deposition Manufactured robot, named Sprawl. It has six legs -- there are the tuned, springy legs. It moves in a gait that an insect uses, and here it is going on the treadmill. Now, what's important about this robot, compared to other robots, is that it can't see anything, it can't feel anything, it doesn't have a brain, yet it can maneuver over these obstacles without any difficulty whatsoever. It's this technique of building the properties into the form. This is a graduate student. This is what he's doing to his thesis project -- very robust, if a graduate student does that to his thesis project.
這裡的第一個例子是,這是史丹佛大學 形狀沉積製造的機器人名叫Sprawl (爬行)。 它有六條腿 -- 調整至有彈性的腿。 它在像一隻昆蟲的移動步態, 這便是它在跑步機上。現在有關這個機器人的重要性是, 相比其他機器人,是它什麼都看不到, 什麼都感覺不到,它沒有大腦,但它可以 沒有任何困難地通過這些障礙。 這種正是建立屬性在本身形式的技術。 這是一個研究生在做的論文項目, 如果一個研究生論文做這個項目, 這確是非常強勁。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
This is from McGill and University of Michigan. This is the RHex, making its first outing in a demo.
這是由麥吉爾大學和密歇根州麥吉爾大學所製的RHex, 第一次外出演示。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Same principle: it only has six moving parts, six motors, but it has springy, tuned legs. It moves in the gait of the insect. It has the middle leg moving in synchrony with the front, and the hind leg on the other side. Sort of an alternating tripod, and they can negotiate obstacles just like the animal.
同樣的原則。它只有六個運動部件。 六個發動機,但它有彈性和調整性的腿。 它中間的腿與前方和 另一邊的後腿同步移動。交替排序像三腳架, 他們可以像動物的迴避障礙。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
(Voice: Oh my God.)
噢,我的天。
(Applause)
(掌聲)
Robert Full: It'll go on different surfaces -- here's sand -- although we haven't perfected the feet yet, but I'll talk about that later. Here's RHex entering the woods.
它會去不同的表面上,這裡是沙子, 雖然我們還沒有完善的腳,但我將會稍後討論。 這裡是RHex進入樹林。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Again, this robot can't see anything, it can't feel anything, it has no brain. It's just working with a tuned mechanical system, with very simple parts, but inspired from the fundamental dynamics of the animal. (Voice: Ah, I love him, Bob.) RF: Here's it going down a pathway. I presented this to the jet propulsion lab at NASA, and they said that they had no ability to go down craters to look for ice, and life, ultimately, on Mars. And he said -- especially with legged-robots, because they're way too complicated. Nothing can do that. And I talk next. I showed them this video with the simple design of RHex here. And just to convince them we should go to Mars in 2011, I tinted the video orange just to give them the sense of being on Mars.
重申,這機器人看不到任何東西,它沒有任何感覺, 它沒有大腦。這只是調整機械系統運作, 非常簡單的機件。是從動物的根本動力啟發。 啊,我愛鮑勃。這裡是它行走在通路上。 我到美國宇航局的噴氣推進實驗室提出這個機械系統,他們說, 他們沒有能力去火星環形山尋找冰的存在, 或是火星上的生命。他說 -- 尤其是有腿機器人,因為它們太複雜。 沒有任何東西可以做到。接著便到我說。我給他們看了這個 簡單RHex設計的視頻,而且為了說服他們 我們應該在2011年去火星,我將色視頻著了橙色 只為了給他們正在火星上的感覺。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
(Applause)
(掌聲)
Another reason why animals have extraordinary performance, and can go anywhere, is because they have an effective interaction with the environment. The animal I'm going to show you, that we studied to look at this, is the gecko. We have one here and notice its position. It's holding on. Now I'm going to challenge you. I'm going show you a video. One of the animals is going to be running on the level, and the other one's going to be running up a wall. Which one's which? They're going at a meter a second. How many think the one on the left is running up the wall?
另一個原因動物有非凡的表現, 亦可以去任何地方,是因為他們有一個有效的 與環境的互動能力。我要告訴你 我們研的該動物是壁虎。 我們有一隻在這裡,注意牠的位置。牠在按住。 現在我向你挑戰。我要給你看一個視頻。 其中一隻是在水平上運行, 而另一隻是在牆上運行。你能看出哪一隻是在水平上和哪一隻在牆上? 牠們每一秒鐘跑一米。許多人認為左邊的那一隻 是在牆上跑?
(Applause)
(掌聲)
Okay. The point is it's really hard to tell, isn't it? It's incredible, we looked at students do this and they couldn't tell. They can run up a wall at a meter a second, 15 steps per second, and they look like they're running on the level. How do they do this? It's just phenomenal. The one on the right was going up the hill. How do they do this? They have bizarre toes. They have toes that uncurl like party favors when you blow them out, and then peel off the surface, like tape. Like if we had a piece of tape now, we'd peel it this way. They do this with their toes. It's bizarre! This peeling inspired iRobot -- that we work with -- to build Mecho-Geckos. Here's a legged version and a tractor version, or a bulldozer version. Let's see some of the geckos move with some video, and then I'll show you a little bit of a clip of the robots. Here's the gecko running up a vertical surface. There it goes, in real time. There it goes again. Obviously, we have to slow this down a little bit.
好的。關鍵是這真的很難說,是嗎?這真是不可思議, 我們問學生們,他們都看不出。 牠們可以在牆上跑一秒鐘一米,一秒鐘15級, 然而牠們看起來像在水平上跑。牠們如何做到這一點? 這實在太奇妙了。其實其實在右邊的一隻往山上跑。 牠們是怎麼做到這一點 -- 牠們有奇特的腳趾 -- 像你吹的派對吹捲它們可將其展平出來, 然後可像膠紙般從表面剝去。 如我們現有的從膠紙表面剝去一樣。 牠們這樣用牠們的腳趾。非常奇特。這種表面剝去啟發 我們與 iRobot公司製造建立的Mecho-壁虎。 這裡是一個有腿版本和拖拉機的版本,或推土機的版本。 讓我們看看一些壁虎行動的視頻, 然後我會給你看看一點機器人的片段。 這裡的壁虎在一個垂直的表面上跑, 實時再跑一次。顯然,我們不得不慢下一點點來。
You can't use regular cameras. You have to take 1,000 pictures per second to see this. And here's some video at 1,000 frames per second. Now, I want you to look at the animal's back. Do you see how much it's bending like that? We can't figure that out -- that's an unsolved mystery. We don't know how it works. If you have a son or a daughter that wants to come to Berkeley, come to my lab and we'll figure this out. Okay, send them to Berkeley because that's the next thing I want to do. Here's the gecko mill.
不能使用普通相機。 你必須每秒拍一千張圖片才看到這一點。 這裡有一些每秒1000幀的視頻。 現在我要你看看牠的背部。 你可以看到牠這樣有多彎曲呢?我們不明白這一點 -- 這是一個未解之謎。我們不知道牠是如何運作。 如果你有一個兒子或女兒要來柏克萊加州大學, 請來到我的實驗室看看幫忙解謎。好了,送他們到柏克萊, 其實因為下一樣我想做的事情是建設壁虎跑步機。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
It's a see-through treadmill with a see-through treadmill belt, so we can watch the animal's feet, and videotape them through the treadmill belt, to see how they move. Here's the animal that we have here, running on a vertical surface. Pick a foot and try to watch a toe, and see if you can see what the animal's doing. See it uncurl and then peel these toes. It can do this in 14 milliseconds. It's unbelievable. Here are the robots that they inspire, the Mecho-Geckos from iRobot. First we'll see the animals toes peeling -- look at that. And here's the peeling action of the Mecho-Gecko. It uses a pressure-sensitive adhesive to do it. Peeling in the animal. Peeling in the Mecho-Gecko -- that allows them climb autonomously. Can go on the flat surface, transition to a wall, and then go onto a ceiling. There's the bulldozer version. Now, it doesn't use pressure-sensitive glue. The animal does not use that. But that's what we're limited to, at the moment.
這是一個透明的跑步機設有透明的跑步機帶, 我們可以觀看動物的腳,通過錄像帶 和跑步機帶,看牠們如何行動。 這是我們在這裡的動物,運行在一個垂直的表面, 挑一隻腳並嘗試觀看腳趾,看看你能看到動物在做什麼。 看牠將其腳趾展平然後剝離。 牠可以在14毫秒做到這一點。令人難以置信。 以下是他們啟發的機器人,iRobot公司的Mecho壁虎。 首先,我們將看到動物的腳趾剝離 -- 看看那個。 而這裡是Mecho壁虎的剝離行動, 它使用壓敏膠去做到這動作。 動物的剝離行動,Mecho壁虎的剝離行動, 那使他們可以自主爬上平面過渡到牆壁, 然後爬上到天花板去。 這裡是推土機的版本。它不使用壓力敏感膠。 該動物不會使用它。 而這是我們現時有的限制。
What does the animal do? The animal has weird toes. And if you look at the toes, they have these little leaves there, and if you blow them up and zoom in, you'll see that's there's little striations in these leaves. And if you zoom in 270 times, you'll see it looks like a rug. And if you blow that up, and zoom in 900 times, you see there are hairs there, tiny hairs. And if you look carefully, those tiny hairs have striations. And if you zoom in on those 30,000 times, you'll see each hair has split ends. And if you blow those up, they have these little structures on the end. The smallest branch of the hairs looks like spatulae, and an animal like that has one billion of these nano-size split ends, to get very close to the surface. In fact, there's the diameter of your hair -- a gecko has two million of these, and each hair has 100 to 1,000 split ends. Think of the contact of that that's possible.
動物幹什麼呢?動物都有怪異的腳趾, 如果你看看他們這些小腳趾那裡有一瓣瓣, 如果你放大你會看到 在這些瓣葉子上有小小的條紋。 如果你放大270倍,它看起來像一塊地毯。 如果你再放大, 至900倍, 你會看到那裡有毛,細毛,如果你仔細看 那些微小的毛髮有條紋。 如果你放大至3萬倍,你會看到每條毛髮有開叉。 如果你再放大,在尾端處有小小的結構了。 最小分支的頭髮看起來像一個小鏟, 像這種動物有10億條這些納米尺寸的開叉 用來非常接近地面。 其實,這是你頭髮的直徑,壁虎有2萬條,每條毛髮有100到1000個開叉。 想想那種接觸的程度。
We were fortunate to work with another group at Stanford that built us a special manned sensor, that we were able to measure the force of an individual hair. Here's an individual hair with a little split end there. When we measured the forces, they were enormous. They were so large that a patch of hairs about this size -- the gecko's foot could support the weight of a small child, about 40 pounds, easily. Now, how do they do it? We've recently discovered this. Do they do it by friction? No, force is too low. Do they do it by electrostatics? No, you can change the charge -- they still hold on. Do they do it by interlocking? That's kind of a like a Velcro-like thing. No, you can put them on molecular smooth surfaces -- they don't do it. How about suction? They stick on in a vacuum. How about wet adhesion? Or capillary adhesion? They don't have any glue, and they even stick under water just fine. If you put their foot under water, they grab on. How do they do it then? Believe it or not, they grab on by intermolecular forces, by Van der Waals forces.
我們有幸運能與另一組在史丹佛大學大學 為我們建立的一個特殊的載人傳感器, 我們能利用它夠來衡量一條毛髮的力量。 這裡是其中一條毛髮尾端的開叉, 當我們測量開叉的力量,那力量是巨大的, 它們是如此之大,一個這樣補丁的毛髮, 壁虎的腳可以輕易支持一個小孩 -- 大約40磅重量的小孩 -- 。那牠們是如何這樣辦呢? 我們最近發現了這一點。難道牠們用摩擦力這樣做的? 不,摩擦力太低。難道牠們用靜電力這樣做的? 不,你可以改變電荷,牠們仍然能抓住。 難道牠們用環環相扣的方法?像是一種尼龍搭扣一樣的東西。 不,你可以把牠們放在光滑的分子表面上的 -- 仍然不。 難道是吸力?牠們在一個真空間仍然能抓住。 濕附著力?或毛細管粘連? 牠們沒有任何膠性,牠們甚至在水下都可貼住。 如果你把牠們的腳放在水中,牠們可貼住。 那牠們是如何做到這一點呢?信不信由你, 牠在用分子間作用力,通過范德華力。
You know, you probably had this a long time ago in chemistry, where you had these two atoms, they're close together, and the electrons are moving around. That tiny force is sufficient to allow them to do that because it's added up so many times with these small structures. What we're doing is, we're taking that inspiration of the hairs, and with another colleague at Berkeley, we're manufacturing them. And just recently we've made a breakthrough, where we now believe we're going to be able to create the first synthetic, self-cleaning, dry adhesive. Many companies are interested in this.
你可能從很久以前的化學知道, 你有這兩個原子,它們緊靠在一起, 而電子是動彈的。因為這些小的結構 增加這麼多倍, 因此這種微小的力量 足以讓牠們這樣做 。 我們正在做的是採取這一種毛髮的靈感, 並與另一位在伯克利同事,我們製造這種毛髮。 而就在最近,我們已經取得了突破性進展,我們現在相信 我們將能夠創造出第一種合成,自清潔, 乾燥的粘合劑。許多公司都有興趣於此。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
We also presented to Nike even.
我們甚至向Nike介紹。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
(Applause)
(掌聲)
We'll see where this goes. We were so excited about this that we realized that that small-size scale -- and where everything gets sticky, and gravity doesn't matter anymore -- we needed to look at ants and their feet, because one of my other colleagues at Berkeley has built a six-millimeter silicone robot with legs. But it gets stuck. It doesn't move very well. But the ants do, and we'll figure out why, so that ultimately we'll make this move. And imagine: you're going to be able to have swarms of these six-millimeter robots available to run around. Where's this going? I think you can see it already.
我們拭目以待這會有什麼作為。我們是對此十分興奮, 因為我們認識到,小尺寸的規模, 並在一切變得粘稠,和在引力沒有影響下, 我們需要看看螞蟻和牠們的腳,因為 我在伯克利的一位同事,建立了一個六毫米矽 有腿機器人。但是它被卡住。動作不是很好。 但螞蟻能夠做到,我們將找出原因,最終 我們將會做出這一個舉動。想想,你將能夠有 一群這六個毫米左右的機器人可以到處運行。 這會往哪發展?我想你可以看到它了。
Clearly, the Internet is already having eyes and ears, you have web cams and so forth. But it's going to also have legs and hands. You're going to be able to do programmable work through these kinds of robots, so that you can run, fly and swim anywhere. We saw David Kelly is at the beginning of that with his fish. So, in conclusion, I think the message is clear. If you need a message, if nature's not enough, if you care about search and rescue, or mine clearance, or medicine, or the various things we're working on, we must preserve nature's designs, otherwise these secrets will be lost forever. Thank you.
顯然,互聯網已經有眼睛和耳朵, 你有網絡攝像頭等等。但它也將會有腿和手。 你將能夠做到可編程工作, 通過這些類型的機器人,這樣你就可以運行, 任何地方到處飛行和游泳。我們在開頭看到大衛凱利與他的魚。 所以在最後,我認為信息是明確的。 如果你需要一個啟示,如果大自然還不夠,如果你關心 搜索和救援,或掃雷,或藥物, 或各種我們正在努力的事情,我們必須保持 自然的設計,否則,這些秘密將永遠消失。 謝謝。
(Applause)
(鼓掌)