A morphable limb design allows this robot to flip between a sea turtle-like limb for swimming in water to a tortoise’s style for travel on land
The turtle can transform its limbs
Courtesy of the lab of Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio
A robot can move on land and through water thanks to morphable limbs inspired by tortoises and sea turtles.
The Amphibious Robotic Turtle (ART), made by Robert Baines at Yale University and his colleagues, can adapt the shape of its limbs and its gait. On land, the legs mimic those of a tortoise to help it crawl, but in water they convert into flat flippers to swim.
Biomimetic robots that borrow design cues from nature are a common area of research, such as rubber coatings …