The bending mechanism begins with the microorganisms’ metabolism. Under illumination, the algae use light energy and carbon dioxide to make sugars through photosynthesis while also using nitrogen to build cellular components. Together, these processes increase the pH inside the hydrogels.

Because the two layers respond differently to pH changes, they swell to different degrees, forcing the strip to curve. When the light is switched off, the algae use or “burn” their stored cellular fuel and release carbon dioxide, shifting the pH back down. Within 10 seconds, the actuator begins bending in the opposite direction.

The experiments therefore demonstrate a light-responsive, reversible mechanical response rather than a one-time deformation. Lead researcher Marie-Eve Aubin-Tam described the actuator as a proof-of-concept living-material strip whose shape can be modified to produce different movements and functions. The researchers used its bending action for simple underwater manipulation tasks, including lifting a rubber ring and holding a small metal ball.

They do show, however, that photosynthetic organisms can serve as the biological control layer in a soft material that translates metabolic activity into movement, including the manipulation of discrete objects. The project was not designed around a single predetermined application. “We didn’t start with a specific application,” Aubin-Tam said.

“Our goal has always been to bring the research of living materials to new levels. We wanted to explore what becomes possible when living cells are integrated into functional materials.” The team also said its light-controlled bending could eventually be incorporated into blinds or agricultural devices that change shape or orientation in response to light. Those examples are proposed directions for development, not tested products in the reported study.

More broadly, the work offers a platform for investigating soft robotic and biomimetic functions that resemble movements found in nature. Microalgae may also provide a route to soft robotic systems that are relatively autonomous and environmentally responsive. The organisms are plantlike and largely self-sustaining, obtaining energy through photosynthesis.

In principle, an actuator based on this biological process could operate with minimal external energy and for extended periods, the researchers said. The release did not report a measured operating lifetime or energy consumption, so those longer-term possibilities remain unverified. Aubin-Tam nevertheless said the experiment was compelling because it directly visualized metabolism in microorganisms being translated into mechanical motion: “To see synthetic materials actually translate the algae’s biological responses into mechanical motion.” First author Fan Jiang and the team reported the algae-coated hydrogel actuator, its reversible bending and its underwater manipulation demonstrations in the experimental study.

Subject of Research: Experimental development of a light-controlled, microalgae-powered soft robotic actuator

Article Title: A soft robot arm powered by algae and light

Article References: A soft robot arm powered by algae and light. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: soft robotics, microalgae, light control, biohybrid materials, hydrogel actuator, photosynthesis, underwater robotics, biomimetics, living materials, Delft University of Technology, soft, robot

The problem the authors set out to solve is what decision scientists call deep uncertainty: a situation in which we cannot know which conceptual model describes the system, which probabilities represent the uncertainty, or even how to value the outcomes. Traditional hydraulic engineering leans heavily on the concept of the return period — the average interval between events of a given magnitude, such as a once-in-a-century storm surge. But that framework quietly assumes the climate is stationary, meaning its statistical behavior does not change over time. In the Anthropocene, that assumption has collapsed. As global warming reshapes storm tracks, sea levels and river discharges, new and unseen extremes are continuously being added to the record, and the small probabilities attached to rare events carry large relative errors because they demand sample sizes no observational record can supply.

Recent history offers vivid illustrations of the gap between normal and extreme widening. Northwestern Europe suffered severe drought as river discharges plummeted, mass coral bleaching has swept tropical reefs with devastating frequency, and Australia’s 2019–2020 Black Summer produced exceptionally large forest fires. Each event strained systems that had been optimized against a predicted or extrapolated future. The Delft researchers argue that optimization against a single forecast is precisely the wrong strategy when the forecast itself is the weakest link.

Nature, by contrast, never optimizes for a predicted future. Natural systems persist because they contain diverse sets of species that thrive under different conditions, adapt as those conditions shift, and remain robust to short-term fluctuations. The authors propose projecting the three classic dimensions of an engineering problem — forcing, time, and performance — onto three new axes in the output space: diversity, adaptability, and robustness. This is the crucial conceptual move of DARE. Rather than trying to pin down the uncertain inputs, such as future offshore wave heights, engineers should design systems whose outputs, such as wave runup on the shore, are insensitive to whatever the inputs turn out to be. The authors frame this as a step beyond the well-known shift from fighting against nature to building with nature: the next step is building like nature, emulating nature’s principles rather than merely its components.

The first axis, diversity, draws on the ecological concept of response diversity. Ecosystems survive shocks because different species can perform the same function under different conditions — a built-in redundancy. In one classic example, plankton species with differing tolerances to acidity maintained high biomass even as waters acidified, because whichever species could cope took over the functional role. Translated to engineering, this means assembling a diverse portfolio of solutions to a single task. For coastal flood defense, that portfolio could span the entire cross-shore profile: dikes and dunes at the coastline itself, and vegetated foreshores such as mangroves and marshes, living breakwaters, and wide beaches in the nearshore zone that dampen wave energy before it ever reaches the harder defenses behind them.

The second axis, adaptability, addresses change over both long and short timescales. Ecosystems adapt within species — corals with different historical temperature exposure show different thermal tolerances — and between species, as plant communities in the Himalaya shift composition under warming. In engineering, adaptability covers self-accommodating solutions such as dunes, which partially erode during storms but recover their sediment during calm periods and can even grow with sea level rise given sufficient sand supply, alongside adaptive strategies that keep room to change course as new information arrives. The authors also flag a subtlety: some solutions excel at extremes but cause unwanted side effects during normal conditions, as with storm surge barriers that alter estuarine mixing. Adaptability means designing so these trade-offs can be managed dynamically rather than locked in at construction.

The third axis, robustness, is defined as reducing the variability of outcomes regardless of environmental conditions. Natural systems absorb or dampen environmental fluctuations without dramatically altering their functions, up to a limit — climate tipping points being the stark boundary case. In engineering terms, robustness means that unknown uncertainties in future forcing are only partially translated into performance. The theoretical upper bound here is antifragility, a concept borrowed from Nassim Taleb: systems that actually benefit from stress, as some ecosystems appear to do when pre-stressing reduces damage from subsequent events. But because most engineering systems have hard performance ceilings, the authors note that non-fragile, robust systems are realistically the highest attainable outcome.

To demonstrate the framework, the authors apply DARE to two hydraulic engineering challenges. The first is coastal flooding, a threat to the roughly forty percent of humanity living within 100 kilometers of the coast. For reef-lined coasts, the physics is instructive: a long reef flat and high reef friction reduce wave runup, and as reef width increases, runup not only shrinks but becomes less variable — a textbook robustness property. Corals add adaptability, since reefs can grow with sea level rise and acclimatize to changing conditions, and native corals show far less bleaching under thermal stress than transplanted ones from different thermal environments. Even foredune blowouts, the gaps that open in the front line of dune defenses, contribute: by enhancing beach-dune interaction, they increase back-dune resilience against sea level rise, making the system as a whole more robust.

The second example is estuarine salt intrusion, which threatens the freshwater supplies of delta cities. Analysis of estuarine characteristics shows that low salt intrusion risk can be reached via multiple routes — large river discharge, a small cross-section, or a damping or amplifying tide — and pursuing several routes at once reduces reliance on any single one. A robust measure is enforcing a minimum channel depth, since shallower estuaries show reduced variability in intrusion. An adaptive measure is the temporary construction of a submerged earthen sill during droughts to halt the landward migration of the salt wedge, a contingency deployed only when conditions demand it, since it may hinder shipping under normal conditions. In a managed delta such as the Rhine-Meuse, water managers could combine controlled discharge, minimum depths, temporary sills, relocated water intakes and expanded storage into a diverse, adaptive, robust solution set.

The authors are candid about the limits of their proposal. DARE does not eliminate the need for data and models; it relocates that need from future forcing to system response, and characterizing a system’s response is far from trivial — a barrier that open datasets and models can help lower. Nor should engineers blindly copy nature, since coral reefs are bleaching worldwide and dunes depend on adequate sediment supply. Return periods retain regulatory value and need not be abandoned, the authors argue; what deserves reconsideration is the practice of optimizing a design against a single predicted future. What DARE offers, ultimately, is a conceptual toolkit: build in redundancy, keep room to adapt, and smooth out the performance of your system — so that whether the future brings what we expect or something no one saw coming, the shoreline holds.

Subject of Research: A biomimetic engineering framework for designing coastal and estuarine infrastructure under deep climate uncertainty

Article Title: DARE to proactively react to unknown uncertainties in the Anthropocene

Article References: Hendrickx, G. G., Pearson, S. G., Antolínez, J. A. A., & Aarninkhof, S. G. J. (2026). DARE to proactively react to unknown uncertainties in the Anthropocene. Frontiers in Marine Science, 13, Article 1880714. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2026.1880714

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2026.1880714

Keywords: hydraulic engineering, climate adaptation, deep uncertainty, coastal flooding, salt intrusion, coral reefs, resilience, nature-based solutions, biomimetics, sea level rise, return period, Anthropocene

The motivation is practical as much as it is biological. Complex underwater environments remain among the least explored regions on Earth, and they matter enormously for ecological monitoring, scientific discovery and resource exploration. Yet traditional rotor-based propulsion has serious drawbacks in these settings. Propellers are prone to entanglement in dense vegetation, and the acoustic noise and hydrodynamic disturbances they generate can disrupt or harm marine organisms. Navigating narrow and winding passages, meanwhile, demands exceptionally high maneuverability and efficient locomotion. Biomimetics offers a way out, drawing on evolutionarily refined mechanisms to enhance robotic performance, and the field has already produced agile robotic dolphins, acoustically controlled soft robotic fish, and soft robots capable of swimming at hadal depths in the Mariana Trench.

The black ghost knifefish is an exceptional biological model for this kind of engineering. Micro-CT and anatomical observations show that its anal fin comprises approximately 140 to 160 segmented fin rays connected by a thin, flexible membrane. By modulating the direction, frequency, wavelength and speed of the waves traveling along this fin, the fish generates an extraordinary repertoire of movements. Forward and backward swimming arise from unidirectional fin waves propagating in opposite directions, turning involves coordinated body bending together with modulation of fin kinematics, and hovering or vertical heave involves waves that counter-propagate inward from both ends of the fin toward the middle. While researchers have built knifefish-inspired robots before, most have examined fin-only propulsion, often in tethered settings. Integrating an undulatory anal fin with an actively bendable body on a free-swimming platform remained largely unexplored.

Naiad is a deliberate, reduced-order abstraction of the knifefish rather than an anatomical replica. The robot measures 845 millimeters long, 106 millimeters wide and 195 millimeters high, with a 700-millimeter ribbon fin that gives a fin-to-body-length ratio of 0.828, close to the biological template. The fin consists of 11 independently actuated rigid metal rays connected by a continuous membrane cast from Ecoflex 00-30 silicone elastomer. Phase-shifted sinusoidal commands to adjacent rays generate traveling waves along the fin, and reversing the propagation direction switches the robot between forward and backward swimming. The body is divided into four modular segments fabricated by resin-based 3D printing, connected by biaxial servo joints that enable yaw-plane body bending, with a tail that tapers in thickness and rigidity thanks to an embedded manganese steel spring plate. Fourteen servos in total drive the system: three for the multi-jointed body and 11 for the fin.

To evaluate propulsion, the team ran linear locomotion experiments in a 6-meter-long water tank, varying undulation amplitude from 20 to 50 degrees while holding wavelength and frequency fixed. The results revealed an approximately linear increase in swimming speed with amplitude: at 20 degrees the robot averaged 9.08 centimeters per second, whereas at 50 degrees it reached 16.96 centimeters per second, an 86.78 percent improvement. Remarkably, power consumption simultaneously decreased from 33.65 watts to 28.08 watts, a reduction of 16.55 percent, and the dimensionless cost of transport, which reflects the energy required to move a unit mass over a unit distance, fell in parallel. A larger fin sweep, the team found, both pushed harder and wasted less.

The wavelength and frequency experiments produced a subtler and more intriguing picture. Across 20 combinations of four wavelengths and five frequencies, velocity increased approximately linearly with frequency, but the sensitivity of velocity to frequency diminished as wavelength increased. At the low frequency of 0.42 hertz, longer wavelengths produced higher speed; at the high frequency of 0.99 hertz, longer wavelengths reduced speed. A two-way analysis of variance confirmed that frequency exerted a strong main effect on swimming velocity, while wavelength showed no significant overall main effect but significantly modulated the velocity response in a frequency-dependent manner. The maximum velocity recorded was 17.21 centimeters per second, or 0.20 body lengths per second, achieved with a 490-millimeter wavelength at 0.99 hertz. The lowest cost of transport, 3.42, occurred at 630 millimeters and 0.86 hertz, and an exploratory quadratic fit suggested that efficiency peaked at an intermediate fin-wave speed of roughly 0.5 meters per second rather than at either extreme.

Turning is where Naiad’s flexible body earns its keep. The team compared two strategies under identical fin kinematics: a rigid-body approach in which only a posterior section of the fin was asymmetrically biased, and active body bending, in which the whole body adopted a prescribed curved configuration quantified by a body bending coefficient. The rigid-body strategies produced turning rates of just 3.48 and 4.16 degrees per second. Even at the smallest bending coefficient, active bending reached 14.97 degrees per second, and at the largest it hit 23.67 degrees per second, a 6.80-fold improvement over the best rigid control. Turning radii shrank correspondingly, from 0.79 meters for the rigid strategies down to 0.26 meters at the largest curvature, a reduction of more than 67 percent. A reduced-order model based on the time-averaged thrust generated by the ribbon fin reproduced these monotonic trends, supporting the idea that body bending redirects distributed fin thrust and increases its effective moment arm, generating a larger yaw moment and a tighter trajectory than fin biasing alone.

Vertical ascent is the knifefish’s most distinctive gait, and Naiad replicated it by superimposing inward-traveling waves from the anterior and posterior ends of the fin. The two waves converge centrally, canceling the forward and backward thrust components while their interaction produces a downward jet and a corresponding upward heave force. After buoyancy calibration to a near-neutral state, the robot ascended a 70-centimeter tank at speeds in the centimeter-per-second range. Ascent speed rose with frequency, from 1.92 centimeters per second at 0.72 hertz to 3.80 centimeters per second at 1.44 hertz, but showed a non-monotonic relationship with amplitude: the 40-degree setting yielded the highest velocity of 3.08 centimeters per second, while 50 degrees caused pronounced body oscillation that compromised stability and cut the speed nearly in half. The finding suggests an optimal amplitude range exists for vertical locomotion, echoing biological observations that heave and hover behaviors in real knifefish involve differing whole-fin amplitudes.

Field demonstrations pushed the platform beyond the laboratory. An untethered prototype, powered by a 7.4-volt lithium battery and controlled by an Arduino microcontroller with Bluetooth communication, navigated a custom 2-by-3-meter pool configured as a narrow, winding obstacle course, completing multiple transits in 69 to 75 seconds by switching among forward, reverse and turning gaits. On the same untethered platform, the undulating anal-fin drive achieved a higher average turning rate of 29.2 degrees per second and a smaller turning radius of 0.64 meters than a body-and-caudal-fin mode, which managed 17.4 degrees per second and 1.32 meters. The robot was also deployed in a natural lake, where an onboard underwater camera captured video from the robot’s perspective during operator-selected gait commands, providing qualitative evidence that the distributed fin and flexible body can support stable commanded locomotion and imaging in an outdoor aquatic environment.

The authors are candid about limitations. Naiad’s straight-line speed of 0.20 body lengths per second trails some earlier ribbon-fin platforms, likely because of its relatively low undulation frequency range and unoptimized fin-body hydrodynamics, and its Strouhal numbers exceeded the canonical efficient range of 0.2 to 0.4, indicating room for improvement in converting fin motion into forward speed. The experiments used prescribed open-loop gait commands rather than closed-loop control, so the demonstrations validate commanded multi-gait maneuverability but not autonomous navigation. Still, the core result stands: replicating the knifefish’s integrated body-fin coordination, rather than fin undulation alone, delivers a robot that turns faster, tighter and more efficiently, and that can thread narrow passages while leaving the ecology largely undisturbed. For underwater robots destined for confined, ecologically sensitive waters, the ghost of the Amazon may prove an unexpectedly apt teacher.

Subject of Research: Biorobotics

Article Title: Knifefish-inspired robotic fish enhances locomotion performance by undulatory anal fin propulsion and flexible body

Article References: Zheng, W., Yang, Z., Chen, Z., Yang, S., Lin, Z., Zhang, Y., Zhang, J., Wu, H., Peng, X., & Zhang, Y. (2026). Knifefish-inspired robotic fish enhances locomotion performance by undulatory anal fin propulsion and flexible body. iScience, 29(11), Article 117819. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2026.117819

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2026.117819

Keywords: knifefish, robotic fish, biomimetics, underwater robotics, ribbon fin propulsion, soft robotics, Knifefish-inspired, robotic, fish, enhances, locomotion, performance

The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was led by Dr Fiorella Ramirez-Esquivel of Macquarie University, working with colleagues at Macquarie and the University of New South Wales. Using high-speed videography, the team filmed the stinger of the honey bee Apis mellifera as it pumped venom into a transparent gel designed to mimic human skin. The recordings, captured at 300 frames per second, revealed for the first time the complete pumping cycle of a structure barely two millimetres long, exposing a level of mechanical sophistication that the researchers describe as remarkable for such a tiny organ.

The story begins with a behavior most people have witnessed at least secondhand. When a worker honey bee stings a target with sufficiently elastic skin, she thrusts the stinger in and then flies away, leaving the entire stinging apparatus behind. This process, known as autotomy, is fatal to the bee, but it serves the colony by ensuring that venom delivery continues long after the bee herself is gone. The detached stinger does not simply sit in the wound. It continues to work its way deeper into the tissue and keeps injecting venom under its own power, driven by the muscles, nerves and mechanical components packed into the tiny structure.

To observe this autonomous action, the researchers had bees sting a clear gel that mimics the mechanical properties of human skin. Because the substrate is transparent, transmitted-light illumination allowed the team to film the internal workings of the stinger as it operated. The footage shows the autotomised stinger advancing through the phantom tissue through the reciprocating action of its two lancets, the paired, sharply pointed elements that form the piercing tip. In the artificial substrate, which cannot absorb or wick away venom, the injected fluid is eventually forced back up to the surface, making the pumping action visible in striking detail.

The stinger’s anatomy is a compact assembly of cooperating parts. It contains a venom sac that empties into a bulb-shaped pumping chamber, along with the muscles and nerves that drive the mechanism. Two long lancets slide backwards and forwards along a system of rails called the olistheter, a motion the researchers compare to that of a reciprocating saw. These lancets perform two jobs at once: they alternately drive the stinger deeper into the skin, and they pump venom from the chamber down into the wound. Crucially, each lancet carries a valve that sits inside the pumping chamber, and it is these valves that turn out to be the heart of the system.

High-speed video showed that the valves are not rigid flaps but dynamic, shape-changing structures. On the downstroke, each valve inflates like a tiny parachute, expanding to form a seal against the wall of the chamber and functioning as a piston that applies downward pressure on the venom. On the upstroke, the valve collapses, allowing venom to flow into the chamber from the sac while minimizing backflow. This alternating inflation and collapse means each valve behaves as a collapsible piston, sealing when it needs to push and opening when it needs to refill, a solution to the fundamental pumping problem of maintaining pressure without losing fluid on the return stroke.

Perhaps the most dramatic discovery concerns what happens at the midpoint of each stroke. As the two valves meet in the middle of the pumping chamber, they change shape again, deforming to push past one another. Dr Ramirez-Esquivel notes that maintaining a seal is vital for effectively transmitting pressure, and this ability of the valves to deform and slide past each other while remaining sealed is a remarkable strategy for moving fluid. Because the two pistons operate in opposite directions, one is always delivering pressure while the other refills, producing a continuous flow of venom rather than the pulsed output a single piston would generate.

The team did not rely on observation alone. To probe the mechanics of the system, they used micro-computed tomography scans of the stinger to build a three-dimensional picture of the bulb chamber and lancets, then 3D printed an upscaled working model of the mechanism. This small robot reproduced the pumping cycle and confirmed the key features seen in the high-speed footage, providing experimental support for the interpretation of the valve dynamics. The combination of direct video evidence and a physical model gives the study an unusually complete account of how a biological micropump actually works.

Dr Ramirez-Esquivel suggests that the double-piston design adds complexity, but that this complexity is the key to the stinger’s ability to deliver venom continuously in a compact, autonomous unit. The entire device, including its power source in the form of muscles and its control system in the form of nerves, operates without any connection to the bee after autotomy. That independence is what makes the stinger so effective as a defensive weapon, and it is also what makes the mechanism so interesting to engineers. A pump that can seal, deform, refill and deliver continuously within a two-millimetre envelope is a feat that conventional engineered micropumps struggle to match.

The authors conclude that the design principles uncovered in the honey bee stinger could inspire new engineered micropumps, with potential applications in minimally invasive medical devices and microfluidic technologies, fields where delivering small, controlled volumes of fluid through tiny openings is a central challenge. A mechanism refined by millions of years of evolution, in which collapsible pistons inflate to seal and collapse to refill while sliding past each other in a shared chamber, offers a template for pumps that are smaller, simpler and more reliable than many current designs. What has been causing pain for as long as humans have walked the earth may, thanks to 300-frames-per-second video and a 3D-printed robot bee stinger, end up improving drug delivery and diagnostic devices of the future.

Subject of Research: The biomechanical mechanism of venom pumping in the honey bee stinger

Article Title: Ouch! The stinger of a honey bee is revealed as a tiny autonomous double-piston venom pump

Article References: Ouch! The stinger of a honey bee is revealed as a tiny autonomous double-piston venom pump. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: honey bee, stinger, venom, autotomy, double-piston pump, high-speed video, microCT, biomechanics, micropump, biomimetics, microfluidics, PNAS

The central problem the researchers set out to address is one that haunts the entire field of soft robotics. Conventional robots rely on a strict division of labor: sensors detect the environment, controllers process the information, and actuators generate movement. In rigid industrial robots, this separation is manageable, because the components can be bolted together with predictable wiring. Soft robots, however, are designed to bend, stretch, and deform flexibly, and bolting discrete sensors and actuators onto such structures multiplies the number of components, increases the amount of wiring, and complicates the overall architecture. Every additional cable is a potential point of failure and a constraint on the natural motion that soft robots are meant to deliver. The KAIST team’s answer was to collapse the roles of skin and muscle into a single polymer film, so that the same material both perceives and moves.

The material itself is a carefully engineered ionic network. In chemistry, an ionic material contains ions, which are small particles carrying either a positive or a negative electric charge, and it is precisely this mobile charge population that allows the material to respond to electrical changes in its surroundings. To build the Ionograsper, the researchers combined azobenzene, a light-responsive compound whose molecular shape changes when it absorbs light, with a hygroscopic polymer that absorbs moisture from the air. Polymers, the workhorse substances of this design, are materials made of small molecules linked into long chains, and plastics and rubber are the most familiar examples. By weaving the photoresponsive azobenzene units into the moisture-loving polymer matrix, the team created a network structure in which ions can migrate freely, setting the stage for both sensing and actuation within one continuous medium.

The sensing mechanism is perhaps the most striking aspect of the design, because it requires no applied sensing voltage at all. When an electrically charged object approaches the material, its electric field reaches into the film and causes the positive and negative ions inside to redistribute. Positive ions drift one way, negative ions the other, and this rearrangement produces a measurable electrical signal even though nothing has physically touched the material. The researchers used this self-generated signal to detect the approach and movement of nearby objects, effectively turning the ambient electric field of the environment into the trigger for perception. It is a principle that echoes the flytrap’s trigger hairs, which convert a mechanical stimulus into an electrical impulse, but here the stimulus is electrostatic proximity rather than contact.

Actuation, by contrast, is driven by light. When the material is irradiated with ultraviolet light, the azobenzene molecules change their molecular shape as they absorb the photons, and at the same time moisture escapes from the irradiated side of the film. The asymmetry between the drying, contracting illuminated face and the moisture-retaining opposite face causes the material to bend toward the light. This photomechanical bending is what allows the Ionograsper to close around an object, in the same way that the two lobes of a Venus flytrap curl inward to secure their prey. Because the bending is triggered remotely by light rather than by embedded heaters, pneumatic lines, or electric motors, the actuation scheme is inherently compatible with the minimal-wiring philosophy that motivated the project.

Shape retention is the third function, and it is what elevates the design from a curiosity to a practical candidate for robotic grippers. When the ultraviolet light is turned off, moisture re-enters the material through nanoscale pores that formed on its surface during irradiation. This rehydration drives the material to bend in the opposite direction, and the film holds its deformed shape for more than ten minutes, until the polymer structure slowly relaxes back toward equilibrium. In practical terms, this means the light source does not need to remain switched on for the material to maintain its grasping position. For a soft robotic hand, that translates directly into lower energy consumption, since power is spent only to initiate the grip rather than to sustain it, and the release notes that the Ionograsper compares favorably with previously reported soft actuators in both power consumption and shape-holding duration.

What makes the study a defining contribution, according to the researchers, is that all three capabilities, proximity sensing, light-driven movement, and temporary shape retention, are realized within a single material rather than assembled from separate devices. The team did not stop at demonstration; they also analyzed how light-induced changes at the molecular level and in the moisture content of the film give rise to bidirectional bending and shape retention, providing a mechanistic understanding of the coupled processes. This kind of integrated multifunctionality, in which one material performs the work of a sensor, an actuator, and a shape-memory element simultaneously, is rare in soft matter engineering and points toward a future in which robotic bodies are built from materials that are, in a meaningful sense, their own nervous systems.

Professor Hong Chul Moon framed the achievement in terms of simplification and integration. Rather than attaching a robot’s skin and muscles separately, he explained, the team created a single material that senses objects and moves when it receives light, and a key feature is that it maintains its deformed shape even after the light is turned off. He added that the team plans to combine the material with artificial intelligence control technologies and to develop it into a sensing and actuation material for physical AI robots, the emerging class of machines that must interpret and manipulate the physical world with minimal human supervision. The vision is a robotic hand whose very substance performs the perception and the grasping, leaving the computational layer free to focus on higher-level decisions.

The work remains firmly at the research stage, and the team is candid about its current limitations. The material at present detects electrically charged objects, which means uncharged targets would not trigger the ion-redistribution sensing mechanism, and its actuation depends on ultraviolet light, a wavelength band that is less convenient than visible light for many practical settings. The researchers have laid out a clear roadmap for the next phase: increasing the sensing distance, accelerating the actuation speed, improving durability under repeated use, and enhancing the load-bearing capacity of the film. They also plan to make the material responsive to visible or near-infrared light, which would broaden its compatibility with everyday illumination and with the low-power optical sources favored in compact robotic systems.

The study, titled A Multifunctional Ionograsper Enabling Ion-Redistribution Proximity Sensing and Structural-Reconfiguration-Driven Bidirectional Actuation, was a collaborative effort across institutions. Professor Yong Min Kim of the School of Chemical Engineering at Jeonbuk National University served as first author, joined by co-authors Jin Han Kwon, Hyeon Woo Yang, Sungryong Kim, and Gyeong Rok Lee of KAIST, with Professor Hong Chul Moon of KAIST’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as corresponding author. The research was supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean Ministry of Science and ICT, and by the Nano and Material Technology Development Program through the NRF, also funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT. If the team’s planned improvements succeed, the humble Venus flytrap may end up teaching engineers not just how to build a better gripper, but how to dissolve the boundary between a robot’s senses and its muscles altogether.

Subject of Research: A multifunctional ionic soft material integrating proximity sensing, light-driven actuation, and shape retention for soft robotics

Article Title: KAIST develops a Venus flytrap-inspired ‘robot hand’ material that senses objects and grasps them under light

Article References: KAIST develops a Venus flytrap-inspired ‘robot hand’ material that senses objects and grasps them under light. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: soft robotics, ionic materials, Venus flytrap, biomimetics, actuators, proximity sensing, azobenzene, shape retention, UV light, KAIST, polymers, physical AI

The biological prototype is Melanophila acuminata, the fire-chaser beetle, whose thoracic pit organs house infrared sensilla capable of detecting the thermal glow of distant burning forests. Using scanning electron microscopy, the team mapped the ultrastructure of these natural photodetectors and found a densely packed array of synaptic-like protrusions separated by gaps, each covered in nanoscale wrinkles and dotted with nanopores. The gaps provide paths for repeated reflection and scattering of incoming radiation, the micrometer-scale protrusions act as resonant structures, the nanoscale wrinkles resonate with far-infrared waves, and the nanopores push the impedance of the sensillum closer to that of air, so that radiation enters rather than bounces off. The sensilla detect infrared rather than microwave radiation, but the researchers recognized that the underlying wave-management principles were transferable.

Crucially, the team emphasizes that the strategy is one of functional translation rather than geometric copying. The beetle’s architecture operates in the infrared regime, whereas the synthetic material targets microwaves in the 2 to 18 GHz band. The designers therefore mapped each biological feature onto a corresponding synthetic element: the cavities and interspaces of the sensillum became a three-dimensional porous carbon framework that lowers the effective permittivity and improves impedance matching with free space; the synaptic protrusions became rough, interconnected carbon struts decorated with cerium dioxide and MXene nanosheets; and the nanoscale wrinkles and pores became abundant heterointerfaces, oxygen vacancies, and surface terminations that act as polarization and loss centers. The result is a hierarchical structure that preserves the beetle’s strategy of multiscale impedance regulation and interfacial energy dissipation while rescaling the characteristic dimensions to microwave physics.

Before fabricating anything, the team validated the concept computationally. They modeled the aerogel as an irregular Voronoi polyhedral framework, a geometry chosen both for its resemblance to the biological template and because structural irregularity favors absorption. Density functional theory calculations on the two chosen nanomaterials, cerium dioxide and Ti3C2Tx MXene, revealed strong electronic coupling at their junction. Differential charge density analysis showed electrons accumulating on the cerium dioxide side and depleting on the MXene side, creating a built-in electric field and prominent interfacial dipoles. Work function calculations quantified the driving force: 6.030 eV for the cerium dioxide surface versus 5.394 eV for Ti3C2OF, the stoichiometry derived from quantitative elemental analysis of the actual synthesized MXene. Electrons therefore flow from MXene to cerium dioxide until the Fermi levels align, strengthening Maxwell-Wagner interfacial polarization, a key dielectric loss mechanism under an alternating electromagnetic field.

The electronic structure calculations added further support. The density of states near the Fermi level is dominated by titanium 3d orbitals, indicating that the heterostructure retains good intrinsic conductivity channeled through the MXene layers, which enables energy dissipation via conduction losses. Significant orbital hybridization among Ce 4f, Ti 3d, O 2p, and F 2p states above the Fermi level creates unoccupied hybridized states into which incident radiation can excite electrons, opening an additional channel for energy dissipation. COMSOL electromagnetic simulations of the materialized unit cell, combined with transmission line theory and the ABCD matrix method, predicted reflection loss below −10 dB, corresponding to more than 90 percent absorption, across nearly the entire 2 to 18 GHz range.

To realize the design experimentally, the researchers used melamine foam as a sacrificial template because its skeletal structure and pore dimensions closely mimic the theoretically optimized Voronoi-like architecture. The foam was impregnated with a dispersion of cerium dioxide and MXene nanosheets, freeze-dried, and then heat-treated under argon at 350 and 800 degrees Celsius, which carbonizes the template and burns it away as a sacrificial scaffold. The resulting aerogels have densities between 0.018 and 0.117 grams per cubic centimeter and shrink only 5.60 to 13.07 percent during formation. X-ray diffraction confirmed cubic cerium dioxide and the characteristic (002) reflection of MXene, Raman spectroscopy identified the component phases and the graphitic carbon framework, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy revealed the coexistence of Ce3+ and Ce4+ states, a signature of high oxygen-vacancy concentration in the ceria lattice.

Those oxygen vacancies matter enormously for performance. The presence of Ce3+ introduces additional electronic energy levels and local charge imbalance, generating defect dipoles that relax under an alternating electromagnetic field and convert wave energy into heat. The minor titanium dioxide phase detected in the spectra further enhances interfacial polarization at newly formed heterogeneous boundaries. When the aerogels were vacuum-impregnated with epoxy resin for testing, dielectric measurements showed that increasing nanomaterial loading raised the complex permittivity substantially, while the permeability remained essentially unchanged because the primary components are non-magnetic. Cole-Cole analysis revealed four distinct Debye relaxation processes in the optimal samples, and impedance spectroscopy showed low charge-transfer resistance at high frequencies, consistent with the highly conductive MXene and carbon networks.

The absorption measurements validated every element of the design. The CMX5 sample achieved a minimum reflection loss of −63.10 dB at 3.1 mm thickness and 13.58 GHz, with an effective bandwidth of 6.46 GHz, and reached its maximum bandwidth of 7.82 GHz at 4.0 mm thickness. The CMX3 sample performed even more impressively in bandwidth terms: at 3.9 mm it covered 9.43 GHz, spanning 6.70 to 16.13 GHz, surpassing all previously reported carbon-based absorbers while using an ultralow 3.74 weight percent loading. By simply adjusting thickness, the material can be tuned to cover 100 percent of the X-band and up to 84.5 percent of the Ku-band, or 73 percent of the C-band, because polarization relaxation processes dominate at low and mid frequencies. Radar cross-section simulations confirmed that coated objects would be substantially harder for radar to detect.

The team also demonstrated practical relevance beyond the laboratory bench. When a resin patch of the material was placed over a chip inside a communication device, the measured radiation intensity dropped from 110 volts per meter on the bare chip to roughly 10 to 40 volts per meter, a striking reduction in electromagnetic pollution at the component level. The aerogels additionally proved mechanically resilient, retaining elasticity after compression and supporting a 100-gram load with minimal deformation, thermally insulating, with a cubic centimeter sample keeping its top surface below 50 degrees Celsius on a hot plate at 100 to 200 degrees Celsius, and fire-resistant, with the framework remaining largely intact after direct ablation. Filling the aerogel with epoxy even raised the resin’s thermal conductivity and glass transition temperature, because the continuous carbon network provides pathways for phonon transport and mechanically interlocks with the polymer chains.

The broader significance of the work lies in demonstrating that a biological sensory organ tuned to infrared radiation can be rationally translated into a metamaterial for an entirely different part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Rather than copying the beetle’s geometry, the researchers extracted its design logic, hierarchical impedance grading, radiation trapping through multiple scattering, extended propagation pathways, and interfacial energy conversion, and re-implemented it with cerium dioxide nanoparticles, MXene nanosheets, and a porous carbon scaffold. The synergy between dielectric loss in ceria, conductive and interfacial losses in MXene, and defect dipoles from oxygen vacancies produces complementary attenuation mechanisms that no single component could deliver. With broadband coverage, high absorption efficiency, ultralow density, and minimal filler content combined in one material, the beetle-inspired aerogel points toward next-generation electromagnetic interference shielding, stealth coatings, and protection for the ever-denser wireless electronics of modern life.

Subject of Research: Bio-inspired CeO2/MXene hierarchical aerogels for broadband microwave absorption

Article Title: Modified MXene Aerogel With Broadband Microwave Absorption Inspired by Melanophila Acuminata Beetle

Article References: Liu, Z., Xu, D., Liu, Z., Song, H., Zhang, Q., Zhou, J., & Wen, X. (2026). Modified MXene Aerogel With Broadband Microwave Absorption Inspired by Melanophila Acuminata Beetle. Advanced Science, 13(55), Article e76496. https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.76496

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1002/advs.76496

Keywords: MXene, aerogel, biomimetics, Melanophila acuminata, microwave absorption, electromagnetic interference, CeO2, carbon foam, impedance matching, stealth technology, dielectric loss, DFT calculations

The sheer scale of the growth is remarkable. Publications in AI-driven biomimetics remained sparse through the 1990s, when only a handful of pioneering works laid the conceptual foundations. Interest began accelerating after 2000, but the real explosion came after 2016, driven by advances in machine learning, optimisation algorithms, and bio-inspired computing. The field peaked in 2021 with a surge of highly cited studies, and although publication volumes stabilised between 2022 and 2024, the authors interpret this as a sign of maturity rather than decline, with research efforts consolidating and new thematic areas emerging. Citation patterns showed peaks around 2015 and 2020, indicating that certain studies gained considerable academic influence and that researchers are increasingly building cumulatively on previous findings rather than working in isolation.

To construct this map, the team employed VOSviewer version 1.6.20, a widely used tool for constructing and visualising bibliometric networks. They combined citation analysis with content analysis, examining publication trends, co-authorship networks, and keyword co-occurrence patterns. The search query used Boolean operators to pair AI-related terms, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, model predictive control, and evolutionary algorithms, with biomimetics-related stems such as biomimetic, biomimicry, bioinspired, and bio-inspired. Author keywords were cleaned using a thesaurus file to merge spelling variants and abbreviations, and only keywords appearing at least six times were included in the final co-occurrence network. Out of 17,552 unique keywords, 103 met this threshold, providing a statistically robust picture of the field’s conceptual structure.

The keyword analysis revealed a field organised around three dominant clusters. The first and most prominent centres on AI in biomimetic robotics, where terms such as bio-inspired robotics, artificial neural networks, reinforcement learning, and swarm intelligence form dense, strongly connected associations. The second cluster revolves around optimisation and computational intelligence, featuring evolutionary algorithms, genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimisation, and deep learning. The third, spanning neuromorphic computing, synaptic learning, and memristive devices, bridges AI, neuroscience, and biomimicry, reflecting the rise of brain-inspired computing models. Artificial neural networks emerged as the single most connected keyword, with 914 occurrences and a total link strength of 954, followed by machine learning with 711 occurrences and a link strength of 843. Deep learning showed a notably recent average publication year of 2021.47, confirming its rapid ascent within the field.

Then comes the surprise. Energy-related terms barely register on the map. The keyword energy ranked just 41st, with only 49 occurrences and a total link strength of 82, while maximum power point tracking, a cornerstone of renewable energy systems, ranked 98th with a mere 14 occurrences. In the citation analysis by research field, Energy accounted for just 119 citations, compared with 2,687 for Engineering and 1,602 for Science. The overlay visualisation, in which colours represent average publication years, confirmed that energy terms sit at the periphery of the network, weakly linked to the central AI and optimisation clusters. For a field that promises sustainable, nature-inspired solutions, the near-absence of energy applications represents a striking disconnect between potential and practice.

The geographic distribution of research output adds another layer to the story. China leads with 2,136 publications, followed by India with 1,443 and the United States with 1,402. Yet when it comes to citation impact, the United States dominates with 57,016 total citations, far ahead of China’s 47,945, suggesting differences in the influence and visibility of research contributions. European nations, including the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France, feature prominently, reflecting robust academic infrastructure supporting biomimetic research. Emerging economies such as Brazil, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are steadily increasing their contributions, and the collaboration network analysis revealed strong interconnections between major hubs, with newer players establishing growing ties to established research centres. On the individual level, Simon X. Yang of the University of Guelph leads the field with 38 relevant publications and an h-index of 56, while researchers from Mexico’s Tijuana Institute of Technology and Singapore’s National University also rank among the most prolific contributors.

The study also examined where this research is published and who funds the institutional engines behind it. Journal papers dominate the output, followed by conference papers, while book-length treatments remain rare, which the authors identify as a gap in long-form synthesis. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing leads by publication volume with 276 papers, but Advanced Materials tops citation impact with 7,888 citations, followed by IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics with 7,201. Specialised venues such as Bioinspiration and Biomimetics and Neurocomputing play a crucial bridging role between computational intelligence and bio-inspired engineering. Institutionally, Cairo University’s Faculty of Computers and Information ranks first by citations with 1,735 from just 12 documents, while the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences is the most productive with 26 publications, underscoring that computational intelligence and optimisation groups, rather than energy departments, currently drive the field.

Beneath the statistics lies a compelling technical narrative about what AI actually does for biomimetic design. Machine learning models trained on biological data can predict material properties and suggest optimal compositions, as demonstrated by AI-driven simulations of hierarchical structures found in nacre and spider silk that have informed ultra-lightweight, high-strength composites. Machine-learning-assisted design of nacre-inspired composites and gradient architectures has improved strength-toughness trade-offs, while AI-powered optimisation has refined bio-inspired surfaces such as lotus-leaf-inspired hydrophobic coatings and gecko-inspired adhesives. In robotics, neural networks, reinforcement learning, and computer vision enable bio-inspired machines to learn from their environments, adjust their movements dynamically, and navigate unpredictable terrain, with swarm intelligence coordinating collaborative robotic systems. In medicine, neural networks trained on biological datasets advance diagnostics, prosthetic design, and bio-fabrication techniques such as 3D bioprinting of tissues and organs.

So why does energy lag so far behind? The authors identify concrete technical shortfalls across three subareas. In thermal energy storage with phase change materials, AI has been used for performance prediction and parameter inference, but end-to-end, bio-inspired AI pipelines for tank geometry design, PCM selection, encapsulation, and degradation-aware control remain scarce, with few studies translating natural thermoregulation strategies into AI control policies at system scale. In solar energy, bio-inspired micro and nanostructures for light trapping and anti-reflection exist, but demonstrations at module scale incorporating durability, manufacturability, and cost in multi-objective optimisation are limited. In wind energy, AI-guided morphing surfaces modelled on bird and whale fin analogues exist primarily as prototypes or simulations, with few field-validated, AI-in-the-loop controllers that co-optimise efficiency, loads, and noise under real turbulence spectra. The pattern is consistent: promising concepts, but few validated, scalable deployments.

The message for the research community is clear. The convergence of AI and biomimetics has already transformed robotics, neuromorphic computing, and optimisation, but its application to energy systems, biomimetic materials, sensory perception mimicking echolocation or insect vision, and adaptive control remains an emerging frontier. The authors argue that closing this gap will require deliberate cross-disciplinary collaboration between AI scientists, energy engineers, and biomimetic researchers, spanning thermal energy storage, solar and wind technologies, energy harvesting, and smart grid management. Given that bio-inspired algorithms can optimise energy consumption and that AI-driven predictive models can enhance the adaptability of renewable energy systems, the untapped potential is substantial. If the trajectory of the past decade is any guide, the energy sector may be the next arena where nature’s blueprint, decoded by machines, delivers its most consequential innovations yet.

Subject of Research: Bibliometric mapping of artificial intelligence applications in biomimetic and bio-inspired technologies

Article Title: Bibliometrics in artificial intelligence in biomimetic and bio-inspired technologies: mapping the research landscape and identifying knowledge gaps

Article References: Mehraj, N., Mateu, C., Borri, E., Castro-Gomes, J., & Cabeza, L. F. (2026). Bibliometrics in artificial intelligence in biomimetic and bio-inspired technologies: mapping the research landscape and identifying knowledge gaps. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45560. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45560

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45560

Keywords: artificial intelligence, biomimetics, machine learning, bibliometrics, bio-inspired robotics, neuromorphic computing, thermal energy storage, renewable energy, swarm intelligence, phase change materials, keyword co-occurrence, research trends

The review’s central claim is unifying. Biomimetic camouflage, multispectral signature management, and adversarial attacks on machine vision have traditionally been studied in separate communities, each with its own vocabulary, journals, and assumptions. By placing them in one framework, the authors reveal a shared evolutionary logic: every advance in perception drives a corresponding advance in concealment, and every new concealment strategy in turn pressures perception to improve. This reciprocal escalation, an arms race in the strict sense, has shaped life on Earth since the first eyes opened, and it now shapes the security of the artificial systems that increasingly see on humanity’s behalf. Understanding the logic, the authors contend, is the key to building the next generation of camouflage, stealth technology, robust sensors, and trustworthy artificial intelligence.

Nature wrote the first chapter. According to the review, roughly seven hundred million years ago cnidarians deployed opsins, light-sensitive proteins that marked the origin of biological vision. The Cambrian ocean then escalated the stakes dramatically. Anomalocaris, one of the era’s dominant predators, hunted with compound eyes containing approximately sixteen thousand lenses, an arrangement that gave it exceptional resolving power for its time. Color vision emerged more than three hundred million years ago, adding an entirely new dimension to both detection and deception. As sensory systems grew sharper, concealment strategies grew more sophisticated in parallel, producing the countermeasures that still define survival in ecosystems today: the disruptive patterns that break up an animal’s outline, the textures that match a background, the behaviors that exploit the blind spots of a predator’s visual system.

What makes the review distinctive is how it traces these biological strategies into human engineering. The lineage is surprisingly direct. Polar bear hollow hairs, which manage light and heat with remarkable efficiency, have inspired low-observable fabrics. The spot patterns of leopards and the stripes of tigers informed the design of digital camouflage. Leaf-mimicking butterflies, ink-squirting octopuses, and death-feigning frogs each map onto human equivalents such as decoys and smoke screens. The historical record of warfare follows the same playbook. In World War I, the British Navy applied dazzle camouflage, not to hide ships but to confuse enemy rangefinders and gunners about a vessel’s heading and speed. In World War II, the Allies assembled an entire phantom army of inflatable tanks and fabricated radio traffic to misdirect German intelligence about invasion plans. Deception, in other words, need not mean invisibility; it can mean corrupting the observer’s interpretation of what is seen.

The technical core of the review addresses what happens when sensing leaves the visible band. Modern imaging spans the electromagnetic spectrum from ultraviolet to microwave, and each band imposes its own physics on the problem of concealment. In the ultraviolet, materials such as avobenzone and zinc oxide nanoparticles absorb or scatter radiation that would otherwise betray a target. Against lidar, which measures reflected laser pulses, micro- and nanostructured surfaces convert mirror-like specular reflection into diffuse reflection, weakening the coherent echoes that make precise detection possible. These are not incremental tweaks; they represent deliberate control over how matter interacts with waves, band by band, using structure and chemistry rather than paint alone.

The thermal infrared band presents its own distinct challenges, and the review identifies three dominant strategies for managing it. The first is replicating the thermal texture of the background, so that a warm object presents the same infrared mosaic as its surroundings. The second is modulating emissivity, the intrinsic tendency of a surface to emit thermal radiation, which can be tuned with engineered coatings. The third is suppressing heat conduction, so that heat generated by an engine or a body does not propagate to the surface where sensors would detect it. Microfluidics, phase-change materials, and aerogels each play roles in these approaches. Aerogel fibers inspired by polar bear hair exemplify the biomimetic thread running through the work, while electro-responsive photonic crystals inspired by chameleons can reversibly shift color from blue to red, offering dynamic rather than static concealment.

In the microwave band, the domain of radar, the toolkit shifts again. Composite absorbing materials soak up incident radar energy rather than reflecting it back to the transmitter. Smoothly curved stealth airframes, of the kind pioneered on modern aircraft, redirect reflections away from the source instead of eliminating them. Reconfigurable metasurfaces, engineered surfaces whose electromagnetic properties can be adjusted on demand, point toward adaptive stealth that can respond to changing threat conditions. Yet the review is candid about the field’s hardest problem: multispectral compatibility. Requirements that help in one band often hurt in another. A surface optimized to absorb radar may glow in the thermal infrared; a coating that suppresses visible reflections may do nothing for ultraviolet sensors. Multifunctional stacking and hybrid integration are the current paths toward full-spectrum signature management, and the authors describe them as bringing genuine cross-band invisibility closer to practical reality.

Then the observer changes entirely. When the beholder is no longer a human eye or even a physical sensor but a neural network, the rules of the contest transform. Machine vision systems built on sensors and deep learning architectures, from convolutional neural networks to models such as DINO and YOLO, now exceed human performance in certain recognition tasks. But capability and vulnerability rise together, because these systems make decisions based on learned decision boundaries in high-dimensional feature space rather than on the physical properties of light. Anti-perception has consequently shifted from manipulating physical signatures to attacking those decision boundaries directly. In the digital domain, the Fast Gradient Sign Method applies perturbations computed from a model’s own gradients, while the one-pixel attack demonstrates that changing a single pixel can flip a model’s classification entirely.

The physical world makes the threat concrete. Adversarial patches, printed patterns that can be held up to a camera, have been shown to reduce pedestrian detection accuracy by more than seventy percent. A famous 3D-printed adversarial turtle is misclassified as a rifle from essentially any viewing angle, demonstrating that such attacks survive real-world geometry and lighting rather than existing only in simulation. The attacks are also spreading across the spectrum. Thermal camouflage patches can cut infrared detection accuracy from 95.7 percent to 45.4 percent, and cross-modal adversarial patches can deceive visible-light and infrared sensors simultaneously, meaning a single physical object can defeat multiple sensing modalities at once. For autonomous vehicles, military platforms, and security systems that rely on machine perception, these results define a new class of vulnerability that no amount of traditional camouflage addresses.

Looking forward, the authors argue that anti-visual perception is moving from isolated exploration toward deep interdisciplinary integration, and they lay out a roadmap along each of their three threads. Biomimetics must progress from mimicking form to mimicking function, which demands cross-scale knowledge graphs that connect biological mechanisms to engineering implementations, together with scalable manufacturing of multiscale structures. Spectral physics must move from passive trade-offs among bands to active design, combining emerging materials such as graphene and phase-change materials with AI for Science inverse-design platforms that can search vast material and structural spaces faster than human intuition allows. Research on artificial intelligence, meanwhile, must bridge the persistent gap between simulated and real-world conditions, forging stronger shields even as sharper spears are built. The review’s deepest message is that the hide-and-seek begun by cnidarians and Anomalocaris has not ended; it has merely changed substrates. Every gain in seeing, whether by a compound eye, a radar array, or a neural network, will be answered by a new way of hiding, and the disciplines that treat this as one continuous story will be the ones that shape what comes next.

Subject of Research: The evolution of anti-visual perception across biomimetics, multispectral signature management, and adversarial attacks on machine vision

Article Title: The eternal hide-and-seek: How anti-visual perception evolved from snow leopards to AI attacks

Article References: The eternal hide-and-seek: How anti-visual perception evolved from snow leopards to AI attacks. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: anti-visual perception, camouflage, biomimetics, stealth technology, adversarial attacks, machine vision, multispectral sensing, thermal infrared, metasurfaces, snow leopard, National Science Review, trustworthy AI

The trouble with conventional tools is well documented. Two-dimensional cell cultures, such as the widely used B16F10 mouse melanoma line, are accessible and highly pigmented but do not capture the molecular heterogeneity of human disease. Human melanoma lines like the Sk-Mel series, MNT-1, and A375 offer more relevant genetics but remain simplified. Primary melanocytes isolated from skin biopsies behave more like cells in the body but survive only a limited number of passages before senescence. Animal models—mice, zebrafish, the frog Xenopus laevis, guinea pigs, swine, chick embryos, and fruit flies—each bring valuable features, from the optical clarity of zebrafish embryos to the tyrosinase-dependent, MITF-independent melanin deposition in Xenopus, but they suffer from divergent protein–protein interactions, species-specific genetics, high costs, and mounting ethical constraints. Most critically, identical visible pigmentation phenotypes in humans can arise from entirely distinct molecular disruptions, a depth of heterogeneity that flat cultures and cross-species models frequently miss, leading to inconsistent and unpredictable therapeutic responses.

The review, published in Bioengineering & Translational Medicine, organizes the emerging alternative into three converging categories unified by the iterative Design-Build-Test-Learn engineering cycle. The first is classical synthetic biology: direct genetic and metabolic rewiring using tools such as CRISPR-Cas9, TALENs, and heterologous microbial expression. CRISPR-Cas9, adapted from a bacterial immune system, uses a guide RNA to direct the Cas9 endonuclease to a precise DNA target, where the resulting break is repaired by non-homologous end joining or homology-directed repair. Researchers have exploited this to build exquisitely controlled disease models: knocking out SIRT1 in murine melanoma cells suppresses melanogenesis by reducing MITF expression through altered p38 and ERK signaling, creating a hypopigmentation model relevant to vitiligo, whereas ablating SIRT7 upregulates melanin production via MITF and its downstream enzymes, mimicking melasma and lentigines. In a striking proof of concept, CRISPR was used to correct the T373K missense mutation that abolishes tyrosinase activity in oculocutaneous albinism, restoring enzyme function and melanin content in an animal model and establishing a precise genotype-to-phenotype platform with implications for somatic gene therapy.

Delivery remains the central obstacle to translating these edits into clinic-ready treatments, because the stratum corneum aggressively blocks large molecular cargos and viral vectors carry limited capacity and immunogenic risks. Recent bioengineering work points toward non-viral solutions. A polyamine-modified thermosensitive hydrogel, liquid at refrigerator temperature but gelling at body temperature, has successfully delivered CRISPR-Cas9 ribonucleoproteins through the skin, achieving a 46 percent gene mutation frequency in vivo with no systemic toxicity. Complementary ex vivo strategies—correcting a patient’s own skin cells in the laboratory, expanding them as epidermal sheets, and grafting them back—offer a path to durable, safety-validated gene correction for genetic skin disorders. TALENs, which pair a DNA-binding domain with a FokI nuclease, add a second editing option with lower off-target risk, as demonstrated by disrupting the slc24a5 gene in tuna to produce hypopigmentation.

The second category, heterologous expression systems, swaps slow mammalian kinetics for engineered microbes, transforming melanin from a scarce biological product into an industrially manufacturable biomaterial. The standout example is the marine bacterium Vibrio natriegens, which doubles roughly every ten minutes; when engineered to express a prokaryotic tyrosinase from Bacillus megaterium and supplemented with L-tyrosine and copper, it generates visible melanin within fifteen minutes and saturates the culture within two hours. The same platform demonstrated optogenetic control, using blue light to derepress tyrosinase expression with reversible, spatially precise timing. Parallel efforts in Escherichia coli express tyrosinases such as melA from Rhizobium etli or route flux through the hppd gene to produce pyomelanin, while modular co-expression of multiple enzymes yields non-natural variants like melanin-diamine complexes optimized for fabric dyeing. Eukaryotic hosts fill the gap where post-translational modification matters: the yeast Yarrowia lipolytica secretes pyomelanin with photoprotective and antioxidant properties suitable for dermatological formulations, retaining the glycosylation machinery that bacteria lack.

The third and physiologically richest category comprises biomimetic systems that recreate the dynamic microenvironment of living skin. Co-culturing primary melanocytes and keratinocytes from vitiligo patients produces a patient-specific platform whose drug responses differ markedly from healthy controls—resistant to melanogenic stimulators and hypersensitive to inhibitors—making it a predictive preclinical proxy. Three-dimensional melanocyte spheroids rescue the melanin production that flat monolayers lose, and when treated with the skin-lightening compound fucoxanthin they outperform commercial tissue equivalents in sensitivity. Perhaps most impressive are microfluidic skin-on-a-chip devices: one bilayer-hydrogel platform, perfused with circulating 17β-estradiol and tuned oxygen gradients, reproduces the exact hyperpigmentation patterns of pregnancy-induced melasma, demonstrating that hormone-driven disorders can now be modeled outside the body. Skin explants preserved in gravity-driven, pumpless chips maintain viability for clinical monitoring and personalized testing.

At the macroscopic end of the spectrum, 3D bioprinting and reconstructed human pigmented skin (RHPS) and epidermis (RHPE) models bring structural fidelity to high-throughput screening. Printed bioinks containing live cells and gelatin-alginate matrices are cross-linked, cultured submerged, and then shifted to an air-liquid interface, where exposure to air forces keratinocytes to differentiate and stratify into a viable, keratinized epidermis. Commercial systems such as MelanoDerm, EpiSkin, SkinEthic, and EpiDerm, built from melanocytes and keratinocytes of diverse genetic ancestries, already support safety testing accepted by regulators for dermal irritation and phototoxicity under New Approach Methodologies aligned with the 3Rs of animal research. Pushing to the sub-cellular scale, researchers have engineered artificial melanosomes—tyrosinase encapsulated in lipid vesicles or polymersomes—that synthesize melanin only when triggered by ultraviolet light or that migrate to the perinuclear region of keratinocytes, mimicking the DNA-shielding nuclear caps of native melanosomes. Stem cell technologies extend the vision toward regenerative medicine, with induced pluripotent stem cell–derived melanocytes and MUSE cells integrating into the basal layer of skin organoids without tumorigenic risk.

Complementing all of these live systems are cell-free assays that strip melanogenesis down to its isolated biochemistry. Simple tyrosinase assays using L-DOPA remain a gold standard for rapid inhibitor screening, and they delivered a definitive mechanistic answer in the case of plumbagin, confirming it as a direct enzymatic inhibitor rather than an upstream regulator. More advanced transcription-translation (TXTL) systems can synthesize melanogenic proteins entirely outside living cells, sidestepping host toxicity and metabolic competition. These reductionist platforms are exceptionally reproducible but deliberately blind to membrane permeability and cellular feedback loops, so their findings must be validated in more complex biomimetic models. Emerging cell-free regenerative approaches—platelet-rich plasma, extracellular vesicles, and stem cell secretomes—may bypass transplantation risks altogether by stimulating resident melanocyte precursors and countering oxidative stress in disorders such as vitiligo.

The review is candid about remaining gaps. Engineered microbes are scalable but poorly represent human melanocyte biology; biomimetic constructs are physiologically faithful but expensive, hard to standardize, and still lack immune, vascular, and neural components. CRISPR faces off-target effects, immune recognition of bacterial Cas9, and delivery challenges in continuously renewing skin, prompting development of high-fidelity variants and anti-CRISPR safeguards. Engineered live therapeutics fall under strict regulatory oversight, and industrial melanin production demands biosafety containment and genetic safeguards against environmental release. Yet the trajectory is clear: by unifying programmable gene circuits, engineered microbes, printed tissue, organ-on-chip microenvironments, and synthetic organelles under shared engineering principles, researchers are replacing unpredictable and ethically constrained models with controllable biosystems. The payoff spans next-generation diagnostics, targeted therapies for vitiligo and melasma, biologically integrated sunscreens, antioxidant delivery vehicles, melanin-based radiometal sorbents for nuclear medicine, and even organic semiconductors—a breadth that positions engineered pigmentation platforms as one of the most versatile toolkits in modern dermatology.

Subject of Research: Engineered synthetic biology and biomimetic platforms for studying melanogenesis and pigmentation disorders

Article Title: Engineered platforms for melanogenesis research: Bridging synthetic biology, bioengineering, and biomimetics

Article References: Anika, B., Tarkunde, A., Swarna, B. S., Nayak, U. Y., Prabhu, V., Rao, R., & Bharath Prasad, A. S. (2026). Engineered platforms for melanogenesis research: Bridging synthetic biology, bioengineering, and biomimetics. Bioengineering & Translational Medicine, 11(5), Article e70159. https://doi.org/10.1002/btm2.70159

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1002/btm2.70159

Keywords: melanogenesis, melanin, synthetic biology, CRISPR-Cas9, biomimetics, 3D bioprinting, skin-on-a-chip, artificial melanosomes, heterologous expression, vitiligo, melasma, reconstructed human skin