Comparison between bioinspired robots and reptiles. Credit: Kamilo Melo
A trio of roboticists from KM-RoBoTa Sàrl, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and Verity AG, all in Switzerland, discovered that a pair of reptilian robots they built for use in a BBC documentary in 2016 could now offer a new way to study. marine life and could also be used in disaster efforts.
In their article published in the journal Scientific roboticsKamilo Melo, Tomislav Horvat and Auke Ijspeert, describe how the robots were made, their capabilities and other uses they could be put to.
In 2016, the BBC contacted scientists, asking them to build a pair of reptilian robots; one that would look like a crocodile and another that would look like a monitor lizard. The BBC wanted to embed cameras and place them among real animals in and near the Nile to learn more about how the two species get along.
The research team responded by building and delivering SpyCroc and SpyLizard, both of which could walk along the banks and swim in the river. Both were also covered in skins which allowed them to blend in with the natural fauna. The footage they captured was used by the BBC to make the documentary film “Spy in the Wild.”
In recent years, researchers have improved the robots and now suggest they could be used to study other animals in the wild as well as assist in disaster response efforts.
Improvements included making the robots more like their biological counterparts, improving their mobility, adapting their power system to allow them to operate for longer periods and remain deployed for long-term studies.
Such changes, they note, have made robots more useful as monitoring tools, meaning they could be used to learn more about how animals behave when they are alone and when they interact with other animals when humans are not around. The team also suggests that the robots could also be used during disaster relief efforts, such as floods and fires, to help assess the degree of danger to frontline rescuers.
More information:
Kamilo Melo et al, Animal robots in the African wilderness: lessons learned and perspectives for field robotics, Scientific robotics (2023). DOI: 10.1126/scirobotique.add8662
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