Scientists make robotic models of extinct animals to capture million-year evolution in single day

How do we know dinosaurs? As 3D models, toys, sculptures, animated movies, or even dinosaur costumes. What if they can be turned into robots? In what might look like science fiction, researchers are re-creating the biological mechanisms of long-extinct species with some help from robotics. The aim is to study the complex processes of evolution across millennia.

Welcome to the world of 'paleo-inspired robotics,' a pioneering field of study that combines the prehistoric with the modern by animating extinct animals as robot models.

While evolution took millions of years, engineering these robots can simulate this process in just a day, according to  Dr Michael Ishida from the Cambridge University. 

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"With a couple lines of code or a new 3D-printed leg we can simulate those millions of years of evolution in a single day of engineering effort,” The Guardian quoted him as saying.

As a start, the scientists led by Ishida are re-creating the movements of fossilised ancestors of fish.

His team is studying how mudskippers evolved to walk on land using robotics.

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They are creating robots that can replicate the anatomy of mudskippers to understand the evolutionary pressures that made these animals come out of water.

While engineers have traditionally built robots to mimic living animals, the focus of this study is towards reconstructing entire ancient species, the researchers noted in the journal Science Robotics.

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Such analysis of organisms would help in the understanding of locomotion, as the robots can operate in real environments as opposed to complex computer simulations and animation.

How will it push science forward?

The research will answer questions like how vertebrates moved from water to land, and how some dinosaurs developed the ability to fly, creating the ancestors of birds.

“These robots can help us test hypotheses about the history of life,” Prof Steve Brusatte at the University of Edinburgh said.

“It would be mesmerising to build a robot to, say, understand how giant dinosaurs walked and moved. But what is especially exciting to me is the potential of using robots to study major evolutionary transitions,” The Guardian quoted Brusatte, who is not part of the project, as saying.

(With inputs from agencies)