A Smart, Textile-Driven, Soft Exosuit for Spinal Assistance.

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are often caused by repetitive lifting, making them a significant concern in occupational health. Although wearable assist devices have become the norm for mitigating the risk of back pain, most spinal assist devices still possess a partially rigid structure that impacts the user's comfort and flexibility. This paper addresses this issue by presenting a smart textile-actuated spine assistance robotic exosuit (SARE), which can conform to the back seamlessly without impeding the user's movement and is incredibly lightweight.

Displacement experiments provide evidence for path integration in Drosophila.

Like many other animals, insects are capable of returning to previously visited locations using path integration, which is a memory of travelled direction and distance. Recent studies suggest that Drosophila can also use path integration to return to a food reward. However, the existing experimental evidence for path integration in Drosophila has a potential confound: pheromones deposited at the site of reward might enable flies to find previously rewarding locations even without memory.

A Cyborg Insect Reveals a Function of a Muscle in Free Flight.

While engineers put lots of effort, resources, and time in building insect scale micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) that fly like insects, insects themselves are the real masters of flight. What if we would use living insect as platform for MAV instead? Here, we reported a flight control via electrical stimulation of a flight muscle of an insect-computer hybrid robot, which is the interface of a mountable wireless backpack controller and a living beetle. The beetle uses indirect flight muscles to drive wing flapping and three major direct flight muscles (basalar, subalar, and third axilliary (3Ax) muscles) to control the kinematics of the wings for flight maneuver.

A robotic leg inspired from an insect leg.

While most insect-inspired robots come with a simple tarsus, such as a hemispherical foot tip, insect legs have complex tarsal structures and claws, which enable them to walk on complex terrain. Their sharp claws can smoothly attach and detach on plant surfaces by actuating a single muscle. Thus, installing an insect-inspired tarsus on legged robots would improve their locomotion on complex terrain.