Technology
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Sometime around 360 million years ago, our early ancestors made an important leap in evolution by transitioning from water to land. Although parts of this moment still remain a mystery to biologists, robots are now helping us understand how it might have happened.
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Just like our first terrestrial vertebrates, the "MuddyBot" needs to climb up mudflats or sandy riverbanks, which for a finned creature is rather difficult to perform.
“Even this ridiculously seemingly simple little crutching motion with coordinated tail use confronts our ignorance in three or four different disciplines: biology, paleontology, robotics, and mathematics,” said Daniel Goldman, an associate professor in the Georgia Tech School of Physics, in a statement. “That’s a summary of how far away we are from really understanding it.”
Watch this majestic, yet fairly ungraceful, robotic recreation of evolutionary history below.
[H/T: Popular Science]
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