"Cyber-Roach" Forces Rethink On Animal Movement

Lanxon writes "A team of researchers at the Royal Veterinary College in London has built a 'cyber-cockroach' (a cockroach wearing an accelerometer in a tiny backpack) to try and better understand the movements of many-legged animals. They found that unlike bipedal creatures, animals with more than two legs don't adjust their movements when walking over a softer surface." The academic paper is available from the Journal of Experimental Biology. This research will be helpful in finding better ways for multi-legged robots to navigate difficult terrain.

Comments

The coolest thing about the Robo-Roach

[Gizzmonic]

That robo-roach used to be a human guy, I think he was Czech? Anyway, he woke up one morning and he was a bug. And just when he started getting used to that, they put some cyber-helmet on him and started doing weird experiments on him! Talk about a shitty life!

A bit of a stretch

[tomhudson]

... animals with more than two legs don't adjust their movements when walking over a softer surface ...

... should probably read "some insects don't adjust their movements when walking over a softer surface". To extend this claim from cockroaches to all animals is so stupid it doesn't even rise to the level of "bad science."