Crash-proof Drone Inspired by Woodpecker - DTNS Weekend

0:02Welcome to the Daily Tech News Show Weekend Edition. We do these from time to time when we want to dig into a topic a little more, and we're just doing the one topic today. Very happy to have our science correspondent, Dr. Nikki Ackerman's with us. Hey, Dr. Nikki. Hi. Happy to be here and talk about one of my favorite topics today. I know. So you are a specialist. Explain what your specialization is that pertains to our story today. I specialize in animals that hit their heads, like woodpeckers, and what that does to their brain, whether or not that is brain damage. And we see these kinds of stories all the time where someone has taken technology that is inspired by something natural, like the color of a butterfly wing, how that happens.

0:52We've talked about that before. This one is a story about a collision resilient drone that is inspired by a woodpecker. Indeed. Biomimicry is something that happens a lot. And whenever a woodpecker one comes along, I have to go talk about it because they all kind of follow the same type of pattern. And so I like to make a bit of a stink about it. Yeah. So tell us about the drone first, because it seems like the technology itself isn't a problem, right? Yeah. And I actually can't evaluate whether the actual engineering is legit. It looks really cool and it looks like it works. So I'm not going to criticize that part.

1:31It's a fixed wing drone and it uses self-stabilizing structures called tensegrities and that are basically held in place by taut cables. So it's got this kind of cable like shell around it that helps it absorb shock so that when it crashes into a wall, the wings don't fly off and the kind of computer part in the middle doesn't explode. Um, and they say that this, the way that they designed and built this drone does reduce, um, impact forces by 70%. Okay. So, so that works. Whatever the design is, uh, seems to reduce the impact. Uh, where does it start to fall afoul of your sensibilities? Nice.

2:17Um, so the part that I take issue with is this inspired by the head of the woodpecker. So this actually happens a lot. I've seen power drills, construction beams, vibration absorption structures that are all like engineering biomimicry inspired on the woodpecker. And their point here is that their idea is that the woodpecker has a hyoid apparatus. So our bone that we have in our throat that helps us swallow and things like that. The woodpeckers one is really, really long. It connects to their tongue and it wraps around the outside of their skull. And that is a weird structure. It's mainly there for woodpeckers because they have a really, really long tongue because they're insectivorous and they just need to stick their tongue really far out into a tree.

3:06So they have a bony tongue. Yeah. And we have mini bones like that, but we don't use it in the way that they do. um and naturally when you see a weird skull structure like this you would tend to think that it it does the thing that's related to the weird behavior that woodpeckers do so woodpeckers hit their heads a lot that's weird for us um and so there's been a few bioengineering papers since i want to say like the 70s that suggest that this structure maybe helps them absorb the shock to protect their brain and you've probably heard this in popular culture as well like people say this to me all the time um none of the so i'm sorry i'm diving into this but none of those papers looked at the brain at all so you can't conclude that it's absorbing anything because it's only people may be testing the strength or like the bone density of these structures but not really looking whether or not the brain gets brain injury in the first place so so they looked at the shock absorption of the bone, but not the effect on the brain?

4:10Yeah. And a lot of the kind of quote unquote shock absorption properties are measured on dried bone or maybe like just using bone mineral density properties and not the whole biological system with like muscles and tendons and skin and feathers. And so this myth kind of gets perpetuated. There are publications on it, but none of them are by biologists. All of them are by engineers. And so what happened in this drone paper is they said, yeah, other people, other engineers have published that the hyoid structure, the hyoid apparatus absorbed shock. So we're going to design a drone based on this shock absorbing property.

4:49But in fact, the biological imperative behind this is not real. So it's basically this like self-perpetuated myth since years and years and years that I don't really blame the authors completely. You mean the authors of this study? Of this study. Yeah, because as far as they're concerned, they could go Google and see like other people have written about this. But if you look in depth, which I have done recently in a publication, we don't actually know whether woodpeckers get brain injuries. And of course, the press loves this. And the tagline, for example, for this from the press was, despite the fact that they bang their heads against trees on a daily basis, woodpeckers don't suffer some brain injuries.

5:39And that I always just I take issue with that because that's not true. And we we think they probably do. There's still work, including work from my lab being done on that. We, uh, so I mean, clearly woodpeckers don't, you know, bang their heads against the trees and fall down dead. Right. But what you're saying is there, there might be some long-term effects, you know, older woodpeckers may have memory issues or something. We can't, we can't know. And then this is what I found out for things like bighorn sheep where, yeah, they don't drop dead, but they definitely get what looks like CTE, like it's football player disease where they get long-term brain damage, but you know, that's fine as long as they can reproduce and pass along their genes and those genes aren't going to have like woodpecker brain or sheep brain protection uh associated with them because they didn't die so it's not um necessary to kind of create a perfect system just one where you survive okay my whole point is that like can you actually create really effective engineering if the biological system inspiration is flawed right i don't know is this kind of a placebo effect like i guess my next question is like, all right, that's fair if you're saying, well, the press is getting the bit about woodpeckers wrong.

6:50But if the bone does have some shock absorbing properties, could that actually be the inspiration? Is that the biological basis? So there's also some issues with the publication in itself that I wanted to give them the doubt, But they write sentences like the woodpecker was designed to absorb shock. And as an evolutionary biologist, I take issue with designed. And I know from an engineering perspective, everything's designed. And then in their figure where they represent this biological inspiration with the woodpecker and they have the hyoid bone, they put a human brain inside the woodpecker's skull.

7:33They also made a skull thickness that's like maybe 150 times thicker than what it is in real life. There's other anatomical structures in there that aren't real. You mean in the figure where they're showing a brain inside the woodpecker that's not the right brain? Yeah, I think this may be AI generated because the anatomy is just really off. And so this kind of makes me think like, oh, you didn't even care to look into this enough to take real inspiration. So I guess, yeah, your inspiration can be like, oh, maybe if we make tension structures that look like the woodpeckers ones, this will be interesting.

8:06But the actual biology with the shock absorbing bone, that's still not really confirmed. And so, yeah, to answer your question, I don't know. I can give you another example. You know the Shinkansen high speed train in Japan? Yeah, yeah. The super high-speed trains that whip you around the country. I've been on a couple. They're great. jealous so that one was inspired by kingfisher a different type of bird that has a really sharp beak that dives and they didn't know why the kingfisher like solution worked so they just made this long pointy nose on the shinkansen to um uh avoid creating like a sonic boom when it went through a tunnel uh from pressure and they didn't know the science of behind why that worked until afterwards so i guess in this case the inspiration like solved the problem even though they didn't know why it solved the problem other than like, oh, this might work.

9:02So I guess I can give these authors kind of the benefit of the doubt of whatever works to give you your idea, that's fine. And your idea obviously is cool and it reduces shock absorption. But the way that they write about it and that all papers like this always write about it is like, woodpeckers don't get brain injuries and they're really awesome. And therefore we're doing what woodpeckers do. And I think that's actually a little bit dangerous. Well, yeah, I could see that because what might have happened here, and I don't know, if you don't know, I don't know. But what might have happened here is the imagined structure, even though inaccurate, was consistent and workable.

9:42And so when they took inspiration from that, it actually worked and made the robot, made the drone crash resistant. But it's dangerous in the sense of like you might waste a lot of time doing biomimicry if that's not the case and you won't know whether the imagined construct is good or not. And I'll take it a step further to actual physical danger because what I think is really happening, and we don't have proof for the woodpecker, but they are still getting brain injury. So the point is they're not impervious or immune. If you're replicating a structure that doesn't actually protect them from brain injury, you might just be replicating brain injury, quote unquote.

10:26Like if you created a helmet for construction workers based on the woodpecker skull, it might not actually protect them. I was bringing this. So there's this another tech thing. I don't know if you've heard about the Q collar. It's a medical device worn by football players. It's kind of like a collar around their neck. And the authors say that this is at times inspired by bighorn sheep biology or woodpecker biology and have a completely invented reason why like allegedly woodpeckers constrict the blood flow to their brain. And this collar is doing the same thing, except that's that's not a real thing that exists.

10:59I don't know where they came up with that. But the problem is this is getting worn now by athletes and we don't know whether it's actually doing good or harm. And so basically by kind of believing like, oh, animals are perfect. So if we make something based on animals, it'll be perfect. And not trying to test whether that's true, it actually can be dangerous. dangerous. This is really useful in understanding science reporting to when you see inspired by biology to double think about that a couple of times. Don't double think. Think about that a few more times and try to realize, oh, is this sound biology?

11:37Because I don't think you're saying that biomimicry is useless. There are plenty of examples where if it's based on sound science, that the biomimicry does inspire a good technology. But you need to understand that there are examples like the woodpecker out there. Yeah, and I think, I don't want to discourage engineers from using biology. I think it's really good to have field crossover, but I think, and I don't expect them to know everything about woodpeckers. I might be the only person who cares that much about woodpeckers, but to maybe seek then expert opinions from biologists and collaborate to make something that would maybe be even more efficient than what they built.

12:13Yeah, let me double check. More than just a citation, you know, talk to somebody. Yeah, yeah. That's a good idea. Well, Dr. Nikki, this is great. And I really appreciate you bringing this, especially because it's like so square in the middle of your area of expertise. That's super valuable. If folks want to take advantage of that expertise more often, how can they do so? Well, first of all, I just wrote a review about human thought on brain injury in head-hitting animals. It's actually pretty fun. It has pictures of weird goats from medieval times and woodpeckers. It's coming out soon in the anatomical record.

12:48I'll link it on my website, but I tried to write it more pop culture. It is pretty long, but if you want a deep dive, that's where you got to go. And so that'll be at Nicole Ackermans.com. And I will be also promoting that on Blue Sky at the same handle. Thanks for letting me ramble about woodpecker songs. No, it was a pleasure. The pleasure is all mine. And thank you everybody for supporting us at patreon.com slash DTNS so that we can have these great conversations with Dr. Nicky and others. We will see you with the regular tech news on Monday. Talk to you then.

13:23The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.