I first ran into this at a colloquium in my M.Sc. Cognitive Systems, and it "stuck": haptics isn't just the buzz in your phone. Surgeons use it to keep a feel for tissue through a robotic arm. Cars use it to warn you before you drift out of a lane. The F1 movie trailer uses it to make an iPhone rumble like a pit-lane engine.

What's less obvious is how much of it is borrowed from animals rather than invented from scratch. Gecko feet, which generate adhesive force 600 times stronger than friction, led directly to Sticky-bot, a wall-climbing robot researchers now aim at bridge and satellite repair. Snake balance and pit-viper heat sensing shaped a scorpion-inspired robot built for desert terrain most machines erode in.

The clearest version of this intersection I've seen recently: a team at Sant'Anna, ETH Zurich, and UZH built artificial skin that localizes touch the way a nervous system does, running on a neuromorphic chip modeled on real neurons instead of standard silicon logic.

Reading through how differently animal senses construct the same world keeps reminding me human intelligence isn't the only template worth copying.

References:

Kalauni, K., Gupta, K. M., & Bharti, I. (2014). Reptiles inspired biomimetic materials and their novel applications. International Journal of Materials Science and Engineering, 2(2), 122–125. https://doi.org/10.12720/ijmse.2.2.122-125

Persun, T. (2025, August 13). Haptic feedback rumbles your iPhone for the F1 movie trailer. Entertainment Engineering Magazine.

Schiller, S. (2026, March 23). Artificial skin processes touch like a nervous system. ETH Zurich, D-ITET News Channel.