How EPFL Made Pleurobot the Most Salamanderish Robot Ever

EPFL's Pleurobot is, obviously, our favorite robot salamander. This is likely because it looks so much like a real salamander, but more importantly, it moves just like a real salamander. Or, to be more specific, EPFL has spent years trying to make sure that the way Pleurobot moves is as close to the way that a real salamander moves as possible. In a new paper just published in the Royal Society journal Interface, EPFL researchers describe how they've combined "high-speed cineradiography, optimization, dynamic scaling, three-dimensional printing, high-end servomotors, and a tailored dry-suit" to refine their robot to accurately capture the degrees of freedom, range of motion, and gait behaviors of the real animal. Primarily, it's because they're cute, but there are a variety of much less important considerations that make salamanders interesting to study as well.