Mantis shrimp ‘bullet’ punch mimicked by Harvard robot

A mantis shrimp's punch, which can be as fast as 75 feet per second, has been replicated by a mechanical arm - with the robot beating the animal's speed with a rate of more than 85 feet per second. Robotics engineers at Harvard designed the bot, weighing the same as a paperclip, to mimic the shrimp's 'stored elasticity'.

Professor Robert Wood said: "The speed and force of mantis shrimp strikes, for example, are a consequence of a complex underlying mechanism. By constructing a robotic model of a mantis shrimp striking appendage, we are able to study [this] in unprecedented detail."