Palaeo-inspired robots to be used by University of Cambridge to explore how fish started to walk on land 390 million years ago
Robots will be used to study how the ancestors of modern land animals transitioned from swimming to walking about 390 million years ago.
Led by the University of Cambridge, a team of researchers will use ‘palaeo-inspired robotics’ as an experimental approach to studying how the pectoral and pelvic fins of ancient fish evolved to support weight on land.
The transition from water to land is one of the most important events in the history of life on Earth but many of the ancient species from this period are known only from partial skeletons, making it difficult to reconstruct their full range of movement.
“Since fossil evidence is limited, we have an incomplete picture of how ancient life made the transition to land,” said lead author Dr Michael Ishida, from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “Palaeontologists examine ancient fossils for clues about the structure of hip and pelvic joints, but there are limits to what we can learn from fossils alone.
“That’s where robots can come in, helping us fill gaps in the research, particularly when studying major shifts in how vertebrates moved.”
Dr Ishida is a member of Cambridge’s Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory, led by Prof Fumiya Iida, where energy-efficient robots that take their inspiration from the way animals and humans moved are being developed for a variety of applications.
They have funding from the Human Frontier Science Program to develop the palaeo-inspired robots, partly inspired by modern-day ‘walking fish’ such as mudskippers, along with fossils of extinct fish.
“In the lab, we can’t make a living fish walk differently, and we certainly can’t get a fossil to move, so we’re using robots to simulate their anatomy and behaviour,” said Dr Ishida.
By creating robotic analogues of ancient fish skeletons, complete with mechanical joints that mimic muscles and ligaments, the team will be able to perform experiments to determine how these ancient creatures might have moved.
Dr Ishida explained: “We want to know things like how much energy different walking patterns would have required, or which movements were most efficient. This data can help confirm or challenge existing theories about how these early animals evolved.
“In some cases, we’re just guessing how certain bones connected or functioned. That’s why robots are so useful - they help us confirm these guesses and provide new evidence to support or rebut them.
“There are only a few groups doing this kind of work. But we think it’s a natural fit – robots can provide insights into ancient animals that we simply can’t get from fossils or modern species alone.”
They hope other researchers will follow suit in using robotics to study the biomechanics of long-extinct animals.
We’re trying to close the loop between fossil evidence and real-world mechanics. Computer models are obviously incredibly important in this area of research, but since robots are interacting with the real world, they can help us test theories about how these creatures moved, and maybe even why they moved the way they did,” said Dr Ishida.
While work on the palaeo-robots is in its early stages, the team hope to have some results within the next year.
