Yesterday on the show we spoke with Submarine designer, Lucy Collins, and one of the questions she was asked was whether submarine design has ever tried to emulate the flexi-torso techniques used by sea creatures to displace water more effectively.
Professor Kit Parker of Harvard University is doing just this. He looks to the natural world for engineering inspiration, and has built a robotic stingray, which imitates the movement of a living stingray.
He talks to Jesse Mulligan about using living cells and synthetic materials to create a kind of hybrid robotic creature.
