Engineers from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne design a robot that can spontaneously reconfigure itself to navigate a range of extreme natural landscapes.

From mountain goats that run up near-vertical rock faces to armadillos that roll into a protective ball, animals have evolved to adapt effortlessly to changes in their environment. In contrast, when ...

GOAT robot moves forward with little energy expenditure. It adapts its body to the terrain in order to move optimally.

Interestingly, that implementation didn’t drive the linkages themselves, but used tension cables around the mechanism. We also see this in a very similar tentacle robot, so it might be a better ...