‘Primitive’ cell inspires advanced robot mini-sub

by Dr Jonathan Sarfati

---

See how the advance of scientific knowledge supports intelligent design! Darwin’s Black Box Dr. Michael J. Behe This easy-to-read book does a top notch job of explaining one of the most vexing problems in biology: the origin of the complexity that permeates all of life. Behe, a professor in biochemistry who is not a Biblical creationist, comes to the conclusion that at a biochemical level, scientists have no option but to believe in intelligent design. ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY

Visit our Q&A page on Design!

Technology company Nekton Research has built a number of robots mimicking the design of insects and reptiles. Their latest attempt to capture ‘the essence of a biological organism’s motion’ is modelled on a Paramecium, a single-celled creature with a single moving part.

The understanding of its motion (called helical klinotaxis) and sensory system was applied to a robot. This produced probably the world’s smallest ‘autonomous underwater vehicle’ (AUV) called the MicroHunter, about the size of a cigar. It can turn on a dime, and it is so manoeuvrable in three dimensions that a former US Navy SEAL acting as underwater goalie couldn’t stop most of a swarm of them passing him to a reach a target (a light beam).

These ingenious machines are said to be ‘changing the way people are thinking about doing oceanography’.

Source

• Wakefield, J., Mimicking Mother Nature, Scientific American 286(1):24–25, January 2002.

How much more ingenious is the One who programmed these organisms (which are much smaller than the man-made device) in the first place!