Create robots to save the endangered species of turtles

American scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created robots that adapt to the movements of newly hatched sea turtles. Scientists hope this could help them find a way to conserve endangered sea turtles.

The turtle was designed based on the analysis of the motions of the endangered sea turtles. Due to the unfavorable environment, and from eggshells, tortoises were killed in mass. To survive, they are forced to cross the sand into the sea.

Scientists are watching the turtle move.

To learn the mechanism of movement of these tiny tortoises, scientists placed 25 cameras to record each step they crawled on artificial sand made of tiny particles. They think the bending of the knee joints is key to clearing the sand.

Scientists have applied this mechanism to create a new robot - a 19cm long, 970gam, a beautiful machine - attached to the 'paddles' by a servomotor. No need to bend, the robot is moving very fast without clinging to the sand.

Experimenting with the tortoise has proven that, if you have to roll the sand legs, then the turtle robot moves very hard so the action is superfluous. The authors hope that subsequent experiments on robots will tell scientists how to protect marine turtles from extinction.

The work is published in the journal Bioinspirrations and Biometics.