This Lizard-Like Robot Shows How Orobates Walked 280 Million Years Ago

So far, we have learned that the first life form on Earth was in the ocean which then developed and expanded to land. And to find out how the first creature settling down on land walked, paleontologists have teamed up with engineers and computer scientists to develop an Orobates pabsti robot.

Known as “stem amniote,” the 280-million-year-old creature evolved from tetrapods – land vertebrates that eat plants. The creature is likely a cousin to what has become today’s reptiles, birds, and mammals.

Considering that, it carries a good organism to study as scientists can find out the way creatures managed to move on land as well as how life forms have got such diversity today. Scientists have come up with a prediction that Orobates might have dragged its body from one spot to another like a salamander that undulates from side to side.

Luckily, the research team can make use of a complete skeleton with four legs and fossils of ancient footprints to examine.

The team created a model using computers with the aim to understand the movement rhythm of the prehistoric creature, and they took advantage of what they know about existing creatures such as skinks, iguanas, and caimans to theorized how its locomotion. Based on X-ray vision of these animals walking, the research team generated animations constrained by the limits of reality.

Not done yet, the researchers continued by building OroBOT, a robot version of Orobates which is 1.2 meters long. The Orobates robot can conduct physical movements according to the team’s prediction. Packing 28 motors along with 3D printed body parts, OroBOT is the team’s attempt in bringing a prehistoric creature back from the dead.

Based on the date that the team compiled, they concluded that Orobates was far more advanced in moving on the ground than previously thought. This walking style was essentially invented much earlier than what we believed, in which Orobates did not drag its stomach around on the soil, it instead held the stomach up in the air like a caiman or iguana does today.

The study went on the journal Nature on January 16, with a video showing the creation of the robot and illustration of Orobates’ movement.

More importantly, the study interactive provides us with a real-time computer simulation of its possible walking. According to the team, the interactive brings about the exploration of filters which constrain our simulations, enabling revision of their approach with new data, methods, and assumptions.