These Five Animals Inspired Four Robots

Penguins, springboks, elephants, and more inspired engineers to create versatile robots

One of the most complex engineering challenges in robotics is making robots move with efficiency and elegance. Two-legged humans as well as four-legged dogs have long provided inspiration, but many futuristic-looking robots are inspired by many different animals. In fact, engineers frequently take inspiration from the animal world to create robots with ever more capabilities.

“When teaching students how to develop a robot we advise them to draw inspiration from the movements of animals,” says Marco Hutter, Professor at ETH Zurich’s Robotic Systems Lab. “Nature is still well ahead of us and offers countless unique and highly optimized solutions.”

Here are four robots that imitate exotic animals:

Hutter’s own most renowned creation is even named ANYmal. This robot can operate autonomously in different environments from industrial sites to underground sewage systems. Its four legs give the robot extra stability on uneven terrain, let it climb stairs and enables it to crouch and duck under lower hanging ceilings. In addition to expanding ANYmals abilities with further research, the robot is being commercialized by ETH spin-off Anybotics.

Created by a team of eight mechanical and electrical engineering students at ETH Zurich, this flying and diving robot combines the movements of two different animals. When diving head first at high speed into the water it imitates a gannet, a large seabird that can dive from a height of up to 30 meters at a speed of up to 100 km/h into the sea to hunt their prey underwater. But once it is under the water, the robot rapidly switches taking on the qualities of a king penguin.

The animals master their movements with ease, but modelling them is a great challenge for scientists. “We were highly motivated to solve this engineering challenge,” says Marvin Harms, a Master's student in Mechanical Engineering at ETH Zurich. “After all, no one had been able to do that so far.”

Indeed, the eight students managed to overcome most of the obstacles during their one-year long project. However, the transition from the individual phases – flight to diving and emergence – does not always work reliably.

A team of engineering students developed the concept of a four-legged robot even further for use in space. Due to the low gravity environment they decided to create a jumping robot that moves similar to the African Springbok. Named SpaceBok for its intended use in space exploration the robot can leap repeatedly into the air just like its animal namesake.

Proboscis, named after the Latin term for elephant trunk, is a search and rescue robot inspired by the elephant and its trunk. It is intended to be used to search for people buried underneath heaps of rubble after, for example, an earthquake and to bring food and medication to them until they can be rescued.

Robotics is still a relatively young science, and with the whole of the animal kingdom to provide inspiration, there are many more practical engineering projects that will search for solutions to mobility challenges that evolution has already solved.