Latest news with #biomechanics
Entrepreneur
6 days ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Nature Already Solved It: How Biomimicry Is Shaping the Future of Technology
At Clone, a pioneering robotics company headquartered in Poland and California, Wiktoria Kruk, Vice President of Biomechanics & Design, is spearheading a movement that fuses art, biology, and engineering into a new era of technological development—biomimicry. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. In a world driven by relentless innovation, the most revolutionary ideas are often rooted in the ancient intelligence of the natural world. At Clone, a pioneering robotics company headquartered in Poland and California, Wiktoria Kruk, Vice President of Biomechanics & Design, is spearheading a movement that fuses art, biology, and engineering into a new era of technological development—biomimicry. Together with a multidisciplinary team of engineers, artists, investors, and researchers, Kruk is helping to reimagine what robots can become—not just machines, but human-compatible companions, designed with the same grace, adaptability, and responsiveness found in nature itself. Biomimicry: Nature as the Ultimate Engineer Biomimicry, the practice of emulating nature's time-tested patterns and strategies, sits at the core of Clone's design philosophy. Instead of designing from scratch, Kruk and her team draw inspiration from evolution's finest work: the human body. "Nature doesn't guess—it evolves," says Kruk. That ethos is what guides her work as she oversees the design of machines that mimic bones, muscles, tendons, and even vascular systems. One of her most significant breakthroughs is a soft-bodied biomimetic robot, created to adapt intuitively to human interaction. The secret lies in its materials—engineered for flexibility, sensitivity, and human touch. "The attempt to create a human-like machine is incomplete if it's not made in our likeness," she explains. "Those crafted with a deep understanding of their biological origins can operate on the same efficient principles that govern the human body.". From Studio to Lab: An Artist's Path to Robotics Wiktoria Kruk's journey to robotics began not in a lab, but in a studio. With over a decade of experience in fine arts, she cultivated her skills in abstract thinking, observation, and multidisciplinary collaboration. That foundation now informs her approach to engineering design, offering a rare and valuable perspective. "My passion for breaking down complex systems and finding elegant solutions led me naturally to Clone," she says. "Wrocław, the city where I studied, has become both my home and the hub of this incredible innovation." Her work demonstrates how creativity and precision can coalesce to create designs that are not only functional—but beautiful. Following Evolution's Lead Clone was founded in 2021 by Dhanush Radhakrishnan and Łukasz Koźlik on the insight that with an artificial muscle fiber that approaches human skeletal muscle in performance, across force, speed, and displacement, actuating an anatomically accurate, natural skeleton with this muscle fiber will result in truly human-level androids by strength, speed, range of motion, and its lifelike behavior. By replicating human bones, ligaments, muscles, tendons, and fascia directly from anatomy textbooks, Clone's founding team has developed a soft, low-cost android design whose hardware is capable of performing virtually any human task with sufficient intelligence. Today, the company spans two continents with offices in both Wrocław and Mountain View. The founders are investing across textile engineering, microfluidics, advanced materials, battery technology, and embedded robotics to deliver the first untethered, walking Clones. Simultaneously, the team is scaling up their effort to build a robot foundation model for general-purpose autonomy, which includes amassing a team of scientists and engineers in robot learning along with a massive, real-world data collection effort to bootstrap the first Clone brain. "If this project succeeds," says Kruk, "we'll have created the most intuitive, elegant, and beautiful robot in the world—because it's built according to nature's own principles." The philosophy is clear: evolution is not just a guide, it's a blueprint. The Clone Alpha: Biomimicry in Motion The team's flagship creation, Clone Alpha, is a triumph of this philosophy. With 206 synthetic bones and Myofiber artificial muscles, the robot mirrors the human musculoskeletal system with startling fidelity. The result is a machine capable of fluid, natural movement—ideal for real-world applications in caregiving, domestic environments, and 13interactive services. By transferring mundane labor to machines that can truly integrate with people's lives, we free human labor to focus on what can't be automated: emotional insight, creativity, and critical decision-making. The Art of Simplification Despite the advanced outcomes, the process itself is grounded in patience and simplification. Designing structures to replicate microscopic tissue and fiber systems that have evolved over billions of years is a monumental challenge. Kruk and her team engage deeply with the materials, iteratively refining their approach until solutions emerge naturally. "There are no shortcuts in this kind of design," she explains. "It's about listening to the material, understanding the motion, and staying close to the process.". This hands-on, tactile methodology has been key to developing soft robotic systems that perform reliably without sacrificing nuance. Technology and Nature in Harmony Looking ahead, Wiktoria Kruk envisions a world where technology and nature aren't at odds, but work in harmony to support human flourishing. By studying nature's intricacies—from the geometry of connective tissues to the rhythms of locomotion—she aims to create robots that are sustainable, empathetic, and deeply attuned to human needs. "Nature holds the answers to most of the challenges we face," Kruk says. Her vision isn't just about better machines—it's about better relationships between people and the tools they use. In an era where artificial intelligence and automation dominate headlines, Wiktoria Kruk's work is a powerful reminder that the best innovations are often the ones we rediscover. At Clone, biomimicry is more than a strategy—it's a mindset. It challenges us to see machines not as cold tools, but as organic extensions of ourselves.
South China Morning Post
08-05-2025
- Science
- South China Morning Post
China welcomes back physics star Lin Shaozhen – and out comes the online abuse
Lin Shaozhen has risen in the field of biomechanics to carve out an impressive international career. Now, after spending the past five years at Aix-Marseille University in France, and more recently at the University of Singapore, Lin has returned to work in China. Advertisement In February, Lin, who is in his thirties, took a full-time position as a professor and doctoral supervisor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou in the southern province of Guangdong, according to the university's website. In the past week or so, though, Lin has also been the target of online abuse. Since being appointed to his new position at Sun Yat-sen University , some photos of him have appeared on the Chinese social media app RedNote , resulting in hundreds of comments mocking his appearance. After several years abroad, physicist Lin Shaozhen has returned to home to work at China's Sun Yat-sen University. Photo: Handout In various photos, the professor's head appears titled. According to comments online, the condition is a result of congenital muscular torticollis, also known as wryneck. The South China Morning Post contacted Lin for comment. Lin was born in the city of Ganzhou, in central China's Jiangxi province, and was part of a 'hongzhi' high school programme that subsidises students in need. Advertisement He soared academically, eventually establishing himself as a leading physics researcher. To date, he has published 41 Science Citation Index papers in top academic journals. Lin has published three articles as an author and has served as a reviewer in the prestigious physics journal Physical Review Letters.
