Robot Safari

Source: Centre for Automatic and Robotics of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain

Bat-Bot – Centre for Automatic and Robotics of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain

Forming part of the Eurobotics week, the three-day free festival will let visitors interact with ‘creatures that swim, flap, and crawl, in a unique safari experience’, says the Science Museum, with many of the critters having never been out in public before.

Among the robots on show will be a shoal of luminous robotic fish, called Jessiko; which will swim along as a pack with the aim of helping scientists study fish behavior.

From water to air, the Bat-Bot – on its first flight to the UK – moves with extremely light artificial wing muscles, which change shape as it flies.

Moving (very quickly) onto land, the Cheetah-cub robot, developed in Switzerland, is billed as ‘the fastest sub-30kg quadruped robot in the world, reaching 1.42m/s (six body lengths per second).’ It mimics the movement of a cat to help investigations into the mechanics of how cats walk, trot, bound and gallop.

Cheetah-cub’s developer, Peter Eckert of EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), says, ‘Cheetah-cub mimics much of cat morphology ­ featuring significant simplifications and better performance than traditional quadruped robots’.

The same school is also unveiling its salamander-like creature, the Pleurobot.

Nicola Burghall, content developer for Robot Safari, says, ‘Visitors to Robot Safari will see not just how nature can inspire innovative robotic designs, but also how these biomimetic robots are actually advancing our understanding of the animals and plants they mimic’.

Robot Safari will launch with Science Museum lates on the evening of 27 November, and continues on 29 November, 30 November and 1 December at the Science Museum, Exhibition Road, South Kensington, SW7. To book free timed tickets visit sciencemuseum.org.uk/RobotSafari