ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Cockroaches traverse crevices, crawl rapidly in confined spaces, and inspire a soft, legged robot.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed.
- Habitat-Specific Design Strategies for Untethered Soft Robots.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Review
- Article
- Nesting strategy reflects individual worker movement in termites.Movement ecology · 2025Article
- Asymmetries-induced nonlinear dynamic behaviors enable versatile modulation strategy for insect-scale robotics.Science advances · 2025Article
- Untethered soft microrobot driven by a single actuator for agile navigations.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Beyond surface tension-dominated water surface jumping.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Arc-heating actuated active-morphing insect robots.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Gecko-Inspired Intelligent Adhesive Structures for Rough Surfaces.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Article
- Comparative Morphology of the Extrinsic and Intrinsic Leg Musculature in Dictyoptera (Insecta: Blattodea, Mantodea).Journal of morphology · 2024Article
- Moving in an Uncertain World: Robust and Adaptive Control of Locomotion from Organisms to Machine Intelligence.Integrative and comparative biology · 2024Review
- HAVEN: Haptic And Visual Environment Navigation by a Shape-Changing Mobile Robot with Multimodal Perception.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Origami-Inspired Vacuum-Actuated Foldable Actuator Enabled Biomimetic Worm-like Soft Crawling Robot.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Seahorse-Tail-Inspired Soft Pneumatic Actuator: Development and Experimental Characterization.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Development and Improvement of a Piezoelectrically Driven Miniature Robot.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Multiple forces facilitate the aquatic acrobatics of grasshopper and bioinspired robot.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Mechanosensory Control of Locomotion in Animals and Robots: Moving Forward.Integrative and comparative biology · 2023Review
- Review and Proposal for a Classification System of Soft Robots Inspired by Animal Morphology.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Close encounters of three kinds: impacts of leg, wing and body collisions on flight performance in carpenter bees.The Journal of experimental biology · 2023Article
- An insect-inspired asymmetric hinge in a double-layer membrane.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Strength-mass scaling law governs mass distribution inside honey bee swarms.Scientific reports · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Jointed exoskeletons permit rapid appendage-driven locomotion but retain the soft-bodied, shape-changing ability to explore confined environments. We challenged cockroaches with horizontal crevices smaller than a quarter of their standing body height. Cockroaches rapidly traversed crevices in 300-800 ms by compressing their body 40-60%. High-speed videography revealed crevice negotiation to be a complex, discontinuous maneuver. After traversing horizontal crevices to enter a vertically confined space, cockroaches crawled at velocities approaching 60 cm⋅s(-1), despite body compression and postural changes. Running velocity, stride length, and stride period only decreased at the smallest crevice height (4 mm), whereas slipping and the probability of zigzag paths increased. To explain confined-space running performance limits, we altered ceiling and ground friction. Increased ceiling friction decreased velocity by decreasing stride length and increasing slipping. Increased ground friction resulted in velocity and stride length attaining a maximum at intermediate friction levels. These data support a model of an unexplored mode of locomotion--"body-friction legged crawling" with body drag, friction-dominated leg thrust, but no media flow as in air, water, or sand. To define the limits of body compression in confined spaces, we conducted dynamic compressive cycle tests on living animals. Exoskeletal strength allowed cockroaches to withstand forces 300 times body weight when traversing the smallest crevices and up to nearly 900 times body weight without injury. Cockroach exoskeletons provided biological inspiration for the manufacture of an origami-style, soft, legged robot that can locomote rapidly in both open and confined spaces.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.