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MIT Researchers Build A Robotic Snail
kiwimate writes "MIT researchers have built what might be the world's first robotic snail. It has two purposes: to understand how a snail moves, and to observer how liquids behave at a very small scale. Evidently, studying snail slime is a rather interesting pasttime. Lots of interesting details on sort of results might eventuate from this project."
No, it's not exactly clear. Being a little cynical, it might be a researcher who wanted to do something weird (build a snailbot to see if it could be done) then PT Barnumed it to get some funding. Not meant to be insulting or to say this is how it really is, just that sometimes people do get funding this way. I know of a guy who gets craploads of money from the US Navy to develop underwater adhesives when all he really is interested in is how mussels stick to rocks so tightly. Does good work too, just kinda off on a tangent to what he's getting the money for.