HONG KONG, Aug. 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — As expertise advances, researchers are more and more turning to the pure world for inspiration. In the sixth season premiere of ‘Tech for Good’, NCS anchor and correspondent Kristie Lu Stout meets the young innovators utilizing the motion and behavior of animals to encourage the future of robotic design.
NCS first visits college students at DGIST, considered one of Korea’s main robotic universities, who’re creating robots that mimic animal locomotion. Their bio-inspired robots derive inspiration from animals inhabiting land, sea, and air – together with a robotic snake for search and rescue operations, a comfortable robotic fish to observe underwater ecosystems, and a remote-controlled fowl that might at some point perform aerial surveys. And, after developing brief towards the world’s quickest quadruped robotic final 12 months, Kristie tries her luck once more by difficult a robotic tortoise to a different foot race!
NCS then visits the UK, the place college students at the University of Oxford are constructing tech to check the ‘pure algorithms’ that govern how hawks transfer and make selections whereas flying at excessive speeds. NCS spoke with PhD candidate Henry Cerbone from the Oxford Flight Group – a world-leading analysis staff devoted to the examine of winged creatures – to learn the way learning birds of prey might at some point make robots extra environment friendly. NCS additionally met with PhD candidate, Davina Thandi, who’s exploring how the form of birds’ wings change throughout flight, aiming to use these insights to the growth of superior aerial robotics.
Finally, as the world faces rising environmental challenges, college students at MIT are growing robotic bugs that might at some point help with duties comparable to synthetic pollination, infrastructure inspection, and environmental monitoring. NCS met with PhD pupil, Yi-Hsuan “Nemo” Hsiao, who wrote the laptop algorithm that controls how every robotic flaps its wings, enabling them to hover, fly swiftly, or hop alongside the floor, permitting them to imitate insect behaviour.
This season additionally introduces an all-new phase, ‘Where Are They Now?’, which revisits groundbreaking innovations and applied sciences featured in earlier seasons. NCS takes a recent take a look at the ‘miller-spinner’ expertise by Stanford University assistant professor Renee Zhao, initially highlighted in ‘Tech for Good’ in 2022. Researchers consider this micro robotic spinning machine has the potential to considerably enhance the remedy of strokes, coronary heart assaults, pulmonary embolisms, and different clot-related circumstances.