No living creature born on Earth has evolved to live in
space. But the next wave of space robots may use "bio-inspired"
designs based on specialized jellyfish cells, lemur climbing skills or even the
fast-learning brain of a human child.
Living organisms still have two huge advantages over even
the best space robots — biological creatures can heal themselves and they have
nervous systems capable of learning from the surrounding environment. At the
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Space 2012 Conference &
Exposition on Sept. 12, robotics researchers from NASA and the U.S. military
talked about their hopes for someday making space robots that mimic those
biological abilities through self-repair mechanisms and "brains"
based on learning software.