This Week In Bots: The Ambling, Gambling, Living, Loving Edition

Robot Fly Trap A professor at the University of Maine has made a robot version of a plant that in some ways is a robot all by itself…the Venus Fly Trap. The diminutive fly-grabber is partly made of a nanomaterial called ionic polymeric metal composite, which acts to replicate the tiny sensitive hairs inside a real trap that send a signal to the closing mechanism when stimulated by a fly landing inside–in this case the nanomaterial, when flexed, sends a tiny electrical signal through an amplifier to the two “leaves” of the trap, made out of the same material. When the bigger signal hits the leaves, they flex in reaction…and trap the fly.