Researchers Build Robot Inspired by Sandfish Lizard

Posted on May 10, 2011

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology built a robot that can penetrate and "swim" through granular material. The inspiration for the robot is the sandfish lizard, which lives in the Sahara desert in Africa and rapidly buries into and swims within sand.

Georgia Tech School of Physics assistant professor Daniel Goldman and his team were able to show that by tilting the robot's head up and down slightly, they could control the robot's vertical motion as it traveled forward within a granular medium. The robot is built with seven connected segments and is powered by servo motors. The robot is packed in a latex sock and wrapped in a spandex swimsuit.

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