Whenever robotics enters the field, there is always great curiosity. This time in the recent study published in the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers brought to life an animal that was extinct 450 million years ago. Will it really be possible?
Although this time it is certainly not a question of having to resurrect worms after 46,000 years, a new and fascinating robot that you can view in the link below represents the perfect replica of a pleurocistideor a small marine organism that has become among the first ever to use a sort of muscular apparatuswhich belonged to the phylum degli echinoderms. To get a clearer idea, let’s talk specifically about all those animals that nowadays include, for example, sea urchins or starfish.
For a perfect and accurate reconstruction, the team of researchers naturally relied on the various (albeit few) fossils found over the years. The final result was achieved thanks to a clever combination of 3D printed elements and polymers. In this way it was also possible to simulate the animal’s muscular flexibility.
Specifically, the muscular trunk was probably fundamental to the movement of the organism allowing it to move on the seabed pushing the animal forward. Apparently, however, we are faced with a real innovation in the robotics field and beyond.
The pleurocystide robot is in fact part of a new defined research field paleobionica. The main objective lies precisely in replicating now extinct organisms through soft and flexible materials. Only in this way will it be possible to better understand the biomechanical factors that have driven the evolution of various living species.
“Bring one new life to something that existed almost 500 million years ago That’s exciting in itself, but what really excites us about this breakthrough is how much we’ll be able to learn from it“said Phil LeDuc, co-author of the study.
Does working with robots make us lazier? Certainly in this case the problem does not arise, on the contrary, similar robots they turn out to be decidedly fascinating and without a shadow of a doubt useful for making us learn more about what surrounds us.