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.
Robotics and Paleontology
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 use robots to study extinct species since we can’t observe or measure very much about how these animals moved,” says Michael Ishida, an author and member of the Cambridge team. “Roboticists can test the effects of millions of years of evolution in a single day.”
But there are several steps — many of which involve going back and forth in time. Early on, the group leaned on its paleontologists to determine how an extinct animal’s bones were arranged in relation to one another, how muscles would connect the bones, and how various joints would act together.
Next, they examined how the closest living match to their target creature moved — in this case, a fish that “walks” on the ocean floor.
“Using computer vision techniques, we can take a video of the fish and translate its anatomy and motion into mathematical representations,” says Ishida.
Building a Robot to Observe Ancient Creatures
Before they begin the build, they then examine their assumptions. “It’s impossible to reproduce every feature of an animal exactly; even replacing muscles with motors means certain aspects of the design are unrealistic,” says Ishida.
Next, they begin building the most bare-bones robotic version of the extinct creature they can. “We like to start as simple as possible to start figuring out all the problems that we need to solve – starting with something complicated when you don’t yet know what you don’t know is a recipe for disaster!” says Ishida.
Also, the simpler the model, the more it can be applied in general to many species. For example, the group modeled a leg as a combination of rods, springs, and dampers.
Finally, they can use the robots to ask experimental questions. “Specifically for fish walking in the ocean: we’re hoping to learn more about the evolution of terrestrial walking in ancient fish,” says Ishida. “What evolutionary pressures led these fully aquatic animals to develop anatomy capable of walking on land? Understanding the advantages of underwater walking in fish that exist today might help us also understand what drove ancient fish toward underwater walking.”
Read More: Researchers Discover How a Fish With Legs Uses Them To Find Food
Playing with Evolution
Once they’ve built and observed these mechanical creatures, they can make tweaks in minutes that could have taken evolution millennia. For example, changing the shape of a fin requires only a few lines of code in a computer simulation or a different 3D printed shape for a robot.
Having the ability to play with the way ancient animals might have moved can also provide a glimpse into the future.
“Not only can we learn about the history of evolution that created the species we have today, we can take those general principles of evolution and hypothesize about the species of the future under new evolutionary pressures, like climate change or interaction with humans,” says Ishida.
Read More: When Environments Change Faster than Species Do
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Science Robotics. Paleoinspired robotics as an experimental approach to the history of life
Author and member of the Cambridge University Robotics team. Michael Ishida
Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.
