There were a few turtle robots that we talked about in the past, but I suppose that none of them had the kind of realism displayed like the Flipperbot. What you see in the image above is actually the Flipperbot in action, where it mimics the way recently hatched baby sea turtles, in all their cuteness, would scuttle across the sand to reach the ‘promised land’, which is the vast ocean where they would be spending most of their days in. Known as the Flipperbot, scientists behind this robot do have high hopes that insights gained from understanding the physics of sea turtle locomotion on land could eventually result in better methods to protect beaches where these endangered marine reptiles return to lay their eggs annually.
It is also hoped that such research into sea turtle movement on land would also shed more light on the movement of other animals that rely on flippers to draw themselves from ocean to land, including the mudskipper, sea lion or an ancient lobe-finned animal that is known as the Tiktaalik.
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