I like robots. I like dinosaurs. So let’s do robots to study dinosaurs!
Or more specifically, let’s reverse engineer dinosaurs, to deduce details of their locomotion [2]. OK, technically, this ancient reptile is not necessarily a “dinosaur”, per se. So what?
As we accumulate more and more dinosaur tracks and trackways [1], we learn more about how dinosaurs and other ancient animals lived (and here, here, here). Of course, there is often a disconnect, where we have skeletons with no known tracks, and tracks of unidentified specimens. Actually, even for living species, it is difficult enough to deduce the reality of locomotion from skeletons and trackways—which is obvious because we can watch the animals actually move.
A new study this fall reports on a detailed study of an ancient species for which we have complete skeletons and trackways. Orobates pabsti lived about 260 millions years ago, and looks to me like a beefy, 1.5 meter long iguana [2]. This family is ancestors of reptiles, and its behavior is an indication of the evolutionary history of amphibians, reptiles, and everybody else.
The research used computational models of the mechanics of the skeleton and simulated musculature and physiology to examine plausible gaits for these animals [2]. This “design space” was further constrained by the trackways which were made by these animals when alive. (They have a neat interactive web page that shows how complicated the theoretical biophysics of walking is.) <<link interactive>>
In addition to the computational modelling, the researchers created a three dimensional model of the skeleton, and realized the model as a robotic Orobates. And then they made the OroBOT walk along 3D models of trackways, to show that the hypothesized gait is plausible.
“Using gaits suggested by the above-mentioned exclusion settings, the physical robot was capable of reproducing track- way parameters associated with Orobates “ ([2], p. 354)
Cool!
This research built on an earlier robot simulator of a salamander, which was adapted to study this ancient species.
Obviously, one could do this study with just computational models and visualizations. But creating the tangible robot is both esthetically pleasing and a form of reality check. No matter how careful and sophisticated the computational model, seeing an actual OroBOT walk proves that the hypothesized reconstruction is plausible. And seeing it walk in the footprints of ancient Orobates is very convincing
Nice work
- Martin Lockley, Tracking Dinosaurs: A New Look At An Ancient World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
- John A. Nyakatura, Kamilo Melo, Tomislav Horvat, Kostas Karakasiliotis, Vivian R. Allen, Amir Andikfar, Emanuel Andrada, Patrick Arnold, Jonas Lauströer, John R. Hutchinson, Martin S. Fischer, and Auke J. Ijspeert, Reverse-engineering the locomotion of a stem amniote. Nature, 565 (7739):351-355, 2019/01/01 2019. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0851-2
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