• Question: I'm thinking of a career in robotics engineering, would that take any part in the field of biology

    Asked by to Bethany, Hannah, Keith, Peter, Ramya on 20 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Bethany Dearlove

      Bethany Dearlove answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      If you wanted to, yes, you could work in both robotics and biology. I’m sure there’s lots of examples, but bionics comes to mind – particularly artificial limb replacement, and exoskeletons for paralysis. You might have seen an example of an exoskeleton at the start of the Football World Cup, when a paraplegic (someone who is paralysed from the waist down, and can’t use their legs) took the first kick of the tournament.

      Although some solutions to these problems already exist, there’s lots of research at the moment on how to make them accessible to a wider range of people (rather than just at research institutions, for example) and being able to control them using your brain, just as you would in a healthy limb. I imagine it’s very inspiring, helping someone to be able to walk again, or touch their family without help for the first time.

    • Photo: Hannah Tanner

      Hannah Tanner answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Robotic engineers can definitely be inspired by biology. Biology has often already come up with the answers to practical problems. The science of using biological solutions in engineering is known as “biomimetics” from the Greek for “life imitating”.

      There are many examples of robots that have been designed to move like living things. I particularly like this robot geko:

Comments