Creatures that evolved underwater have wildly different physiology and anatomy to humans and their closer cousins. For instance, the horseshoe crab has a sensory system with a network of multiple 'eyes', some of which are photoreceptors that distinguish between light and dark.
With funding from the Office of Naval Research, which has granted him a Young Investigator Award through its Littoral Geosciences and Optics program, Professor Bartlett is putting an electronic version of the horseshoe crab’s unique sensory system to work in a series of soft electronics to be worn by a human.
Bartlett and his colleagues are intrigued by creatures such as the mantis shrimp, octopuses and the horseshoe crab, due to the jaw-dropping variety of natural sensors they all employ. These organisms have the means to adapt their behaviour based on unimaginable information relayed to their brains about their environment; for instance, while human vision is based on...