Festo's chief pilot gives us a private demo of its eMotionButterfly, AirJelly, and AirPenguin
19 Aug 2016
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At the
USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C.,
Festo, a German
industrial automation company, brought along some of its incredible robotic animals for a rare public display. We stopped by the Festo booth to check them out. In an abandoned ballroom upstairs, Festo’s chief pilot, Markus Schäffer, showed off three of the company’s spectacular flying robots:
eMotionButterfly, AirJelly, and AirPenguin.
Festo uses robots like these to explore creative ways in which nature can be used as an inspiration for improvements in technology. In addition to these three robots, Festo engineers have also developed flying seagulls, hopping kangaroos, robotic ants that cooperate, a soft manipulator based on an elephant's trunk, and a
gripper inspired by the tongue of a chameleon. Festo comes out with something new every year, and while Schäffer wouldn’t give us any clues about what to expect for 2017, we've been promised that there’s some very cool stuff in the works.
IEEE Spectrum is an award-winning technology magazine and the flagship publication of the IEEE, the world’s largest professional organization devoted to engineering and the applied sciences.
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Stephen Cass is the special projects editor at IEEE Spectrum. He currently helms Spectrum's Hands On column, and is also responsible for interactive projects such as the Top Programming Languages app. He has a bachelor's degree in experimental physics from Trinity College Dublin.
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Evan Ackerman is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. Since 2007, he has written over 6,000 articles on robotics and technology. He has a degree in Martian geology and is excellent at playing bagpipes.
Michael Koziol is the news manager at IEEE Spectrum. Previously, he was an associate editor covering telecommunications. He graduated from Seattle University with bachelor's degrees in English and Physics, and earned his master's degree in science journalism from New York University.
Eliza Strickland is IEEE Spectrum's features editor, where she helps develop and shape the magazine’s longform stories. She also oversees Spectrum's coverage of artificial intelligence and biomedical engineering. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
09 May 2019
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