Researchers use paleo-inspired robotics to recreate ancient creatures

In a study published in the journal Science Robotics, researchers led by Dr. Michael Ishida from the University of Cambridge are using "paleo-inspired robotics" to explore evolutionary transitions of ancient creatures. The team is developing robots inspired by both living and extinct animals to shed light on pivotal moments in evolution, particularly how the ancestors of modern terrestrial animals transitioned from swimming to walking approximately 390 million years ago during the Devonian period.

"We're trying to close the loop between fossil evidence and real-world mechanics," Dr. Ishida explained, emphasizing the role of robots in testing movement theories. Due to limited fossil evidence, it is challenging to reconstruct the full range of movement of ancient species and test the motion of crucial joints like the hip and pelvis. "In some cases, we're just guessing how certain bones connected or functioned," Dr. Ishida stated. "That's where robots are so useful—they help us confirm these guesses and provide new evidence to support or rebut them."

Science, The Guardian, Discover Magazine, and the Smithsonian Magazine reported on the study, among others.

The interdisciplinary study combines robotics, paleontology, and biology to explore the evolution of early vertebrate limbs. The researchers are using robots inspired by ancient fish skeletons and modern "walking fish" such as mudskippers to mimic the motions of ancient organisms. By building robotic analogues complete with mechanical joints that mimic muscles and ligaments, the team can study how changes in anatomy have affected the way animals move, their speed, and the amount of energy they use.

Dr. Ishida, a member of the Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory at the University of Cambridge's Department of Engineering, is working under the direction of Professor Fumiya Iida. The research is funded by the Human Frontier Science Program. "Using computer vision techniques, we can take a video of the fish and translate its anatomy and motion into mathematical representations," Dr. Ishida said.

The approach of using robots allows scientists to precisely understand the stresses experienced on joints and the energy requirements of various modes of locomotion, which is challenging with live organisms. Robots can be placed in real environments with terrains such as sand or mud that would be complicated to simulate in a computer model. "Computer models are obviously incredibly important in this area of research, but as robots interact with the real world, they can help us test theories about how these creatures moved, and perhaps even why they moved the way they did," Dr. Ishida explained.

The team is currently in the early stages of building their paleo-inspired robots, beginning with the simplest possible robotic version of the extinct creature. They hope to have some results within the next year. Once the robots are built, they can be used to ask experimental questions. "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!" Michael Ishida said.

By imitating the motions and anatomical features of extinct animals, robotic devices may offer important new insights into evolution. "Paleontologists must face the challenge of studying the forms and functions of extinct species for which preserved fossil data are extremely limited, providing only a fragmented view of life in remote times," the authors wrote.

Professor Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study, said paleo-inspired robotics held huge potential. "What is especially exciting to me is the potential of using robots to study major evolutionary transitions," he said. "These robots can help us test hypotheses about the history of life."

The researchers hope their robot models will deepen understanding of evolutionary biology and open new avenues for collaboration between engineers and scientists from other disciplines. "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," Michael Ishida said.

In addition to the water-to-land transition, the team hopes to eventually study the evolution of flight and how some animals transitioned to walking on two legs. "We have all these new sorts of evolutionary pressures of animals living next to humans, or animals living with climate change, or all these ways the world we know is going to change," Dr. Ishida said. "If we understand how evolutionary pressures in the past led to a series of different species, maybe we can have some idea of what will happen in the future."

This article was written in collaboration with generative AI company Alchemiq