In early 2016, we had the opportunity to test a pair of sprawling posture robots, one designed to mimic a crocodile and another designed to mimic a monitor lizard, along the banks of the Nile River in Uganda, Africa. These robots were developed uniquely for a documentary by the BBC called Spy in the Wild and fell at the intersection of our interests in developing robots to study animals and robots for disaster response and other missions in challenging environments. The documentary required that these robots not only walk and swim in the same harsh, natural environments as the animals that they were modeled on and film up close but also move and even look exactly like the real animals from an aesthetic perspective. This pushed us to take a fundamentally different approach to the design and building of biorobots compared with our typical laboratory-residing robots, in addition to collaborating with sculpting artists to enhance our robots’ aesthetics. The robots needed to be designed on the basis of a systematic study of data on the model specimens, be fabricated rapidly, and be reliable and robust enough to handle what the wild would throw at them. Here, we share the research efforts of this collaboration, the design specifications of the robots’ hardware and software, the lessons learned from testing these robots in the field first hand, and how the eye-opening experience shaped our subsequent work on disaster response robotics and biorobotics for challenging amphibious scenarios.

中文翻译：

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非洲荒野中的动物机器人：野外机器人技术的经验教训和展望

2016 年初，我们有机会在非洲乌干达的尼罗河沿岸测试了一对伸展姿势的机器人，其中一个旨在模仿鳄鱼，另一个旨在模仿巨蜥。这些机器人是为 BBC 的一部名为《野外间谍》的纪录片而专门开发的，它符合我们的兴趣交叉点：开发机器人来研究动物，以及机器人在充满挑战的环境中应对灾难和执行其他任务。纪录片要求这些机器人不仅要在与它们所建模和近距离拍摄的动物相同的恶劣自然环境中行走和游泳，而且从美学角度来看，它们的动作甚至看起来与真实的动物一模一样。与我们典型的实验室驻留机器人相比，这促使我们采取根本不同的方法来设计和构建生物机器人，此外还与雕刻艺术家合作以增强机器人的美感。机器人需要在对模型标本数据的系统研究的基础上进行设计，快速制造，并且足够可靠和坚固，以应对野外可能发生的情况。在这里，我们分享了这次合作的研究成果、机器人硬件和软件的设计规格、在现场测试这些机器人的第一手经验教训，以及令人大开眼界的经验如何影响我们后续的灾难响应机器人工作以及用于具有挑战性的两栖场景的生物机器人。