nine-and-a-half - Your Reporters: What is Bionics? - When Researchers Take a Leaf out of Nature's Book

In bionics, researchers cheat without restraint! In birds, sharks, chameleons and even plants. Our world is now full of useful inventions from the field of bionics - without us even knowing it. It's time to take a closer look! In bionics, a mixture of biology and technology, special features from nature are recognized and then used in technology. Reporter Jana visits a company that deals with this on a daily basis and invents bionic robots. Here, robots that look like animals fly, swim and hop around. Jana even gets to build a bionic robot herself. But bionics is not just in robots. Whether Velcro fasteners, airplanes or parachutes - nature was copied for all these inventions. However, before such bionic discoveries can make our everyday lives easier, research often has to be carried out for years. This is exactly what is happening at the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg, where researchers are taking a close look at plants. For example, they have deciphered the super-fast movements of carnivorous plants. What bionic invention have the scientists come up with? Will Jana's bionic robot really work? And what's the point of robots that look like fish, chameleons or kangaroos? That's what this episode of "nine-and-a-half" is all about!