'OroBOT' Robot: Recreating the Walk of 300-Million-Year-Old, Extinct Animal

Using the fossilized skeleton and footprints of a 300-million-year-old animal called Orobates pabsti, researchers from EPFL and Berlin have developed a method for identifying the most likely gaits of extinct animals - and designed a robot that can recreate their walk. Orobates was a vertebrate that fell somewhere between amphibians and mammals. The researchers developed a digital model of its skeleton based on the fossil and the biomechanics of modern animals with sprawling postures, carried out a kinematic computer simulation of Orobates’ gait as it walked on its digitalized footprints, and used the fossilized animal anatomy to build a robot called 'OroBOT.'