Salamander-Inspired Robot Motion

A group of researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, led by Auke Ijspeert, have shown how the salamander is able to swim, walk, and crawl. Based on that, they have invented a modular robot that can mimic the motions f the salamander quite well. ead about it @ http://birg2.epfl.ch/publications/fulltext/ijspeert07.pdf


This is not a trivial achievement since there have been 2 major hurdles to building such robots:

1. Making machines that connect to others easily using low power, hold with sufficient mechanical strength to support significant weight and then disconnect easily--again, without expending too much energy--is a difficult job in itself. By adding to that the freedom of movement within individual robots or flexibility in joint angles, then the problem becomes really tricky.
2. The other difficulty is control; how does one get the robots to form the correct structures on the fly? And, how does one enable these new bodies to figure out how to walk, crawl or otherwise move themselves around the room?