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Science and technology
科學技術
Insect acrobatics
昆蟲的絕活
Flipping roaches
非常蟑螂
How cockroaches vanish
蟑螂是怎么消失不見的？
ANYONE who has tried to swat a cockroach will know those insects' strange ability, in the heat of pursuit, to disappear.
只要打過蟑螂的都知道它們特殊的本領—往往在追趕最激烈的時候突然消失不見了。
Robert Full and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have now worked out how they do this—and taught a miniature robot to copy the feat.
加州大學伯克利分校的Robert Full和他的同事現在已明白它們是怎么做到的，并用一個微型機器人模擬了這個過程。
Dr Full had been using high-speed photography to study how cockroaches employ their antennae to sense and cross gaps.
Full博士運用了高速攝影技術來研究蟑螂是如何使觸須去感知和穿過縫隙。
When the researchers made the gaps wider,
當研究者把縫隙擴寬，
they saw the animals flipping back underneath the ledge at the edge of the gap, rather than jumping across the empty space.
發現蟑螂直接在縫隙邊緣翻轉下去，而不是跳過縫隙，
As they report in the Public Library of Science, cockroaches running towards a gap suddenly grip the edge with the hooklike claws on their rear legs and swing 180°to land firmly underneath the ledge, upside down.
正如《科學公共圖書館》所報道的那樣，蟑螂先迅速沖向縫隙，然后用后腿上的鉤狀爪子抓住邊緣，順勢擺動180°，頭朝下牢牢抓住平板底部。
They can pull off this stunt in a fifth of a second—so fast that the animals' bodies are subject to between three and five times the force of gravity,
它們能在0.2秒內完成這項絕技，這么快的速度蟑螂的身體要承受3到5倍的重力加速度，
and also so fast that the movement is invisible to the human eye.
也正是由于這么快的移動速度才讓人類難以發現。
Dr Full and his colleagues have since identified similar behaviour in other animals with hooklike toes that are good at escaping pursuit:
Full博士和同事后來又發現了其他具有類似特性的生物，它們同樣具有鉤狀的腳趾并擅長逃離追殺，
geckos, for example.
比如壁虎。
They have also teamed up with members of Berkeley's robotics laboratory to program a small six-legged robot that has strips of Velcro attached to its rear legs to do the same trick.
他們也與伯克利分校機器人實驗室合作，設計了一只小型六腳機器人，然后把魔術貼粘在機器人的后腿上，最后成功完成了類似動作。
Such a robot could be fitted with a camera and used as a surveillance device.
這種機器人可以用來裝配相機作為監視裝置，
Some people, though, might prefer it to be fitted with a miniature machinegun and used as a UCPV.
盡管如此，一些人更希望它裝配微型機槍變成自動蟑螂捕殺器。
