To recapture a key moment in evolution, when aquatic animals walked out of the ocean, a group of scientists is building robots that mimic the motions of ancient organisms, according to a report in Science Robotics.
The team of scientists from Cambridge University — includes roboticists, paleontologists, and biologists — are performing a feat of intellectual time travel to construct the contraptions. They are looking back at fossils of animals from about 390 million years ago and are examining how similarly shaped current animals move. By doing so, they are pushing the future of robotics to create a mobile, mechanical combination of past and present.
Combining paleontology with both computer modeling and robotics can allow scientists to recreate how ancient species lived.
“We have a rich history of building bioinspired robots that help researchers understand the species that are alive today, but we believe that it’s even more critical to ...
