Claire chatted to Robert Siddall from the University of Surrey about novel robot designs inspired by the way real animals move.

Robert Siddall is an aerospace engineer with an enthusiasm for unconventional robotics. He is interested in understanding animal locomotion for the benefit of synthetic locomotion, particularly flight. Before becoming a Lecturer at the University of Surrey, he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany, where he studied the arboreal acrobatics of rainforest-dwelling reptiles. His work focuses on the design of novel robots that can tackle important environmental problems.

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Check out a video of the pangolin-inspired tree-planting robot that won the 2023 Natural Robotics contest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_9kYvjXyZ0