Roboticists from Thailand’s Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology and Germany’s Kiel University have built a dung beetle inspired robot.

Taking inspiration from dung beetles, which walk differently than other six-legged creatures and are capable of manipulating objects much larger than they are, the team studied the mechanics of the insect.

Translating intra- and inter-leg coordination rules of dung beetles to neural-based ball rolling control. Source: Advanced Science (2024). DOI: 10.1002/advs.202408080

While examining the dung beetle’s locomotion and object transport capabilities, the team discovered that the beetles could move large dung samples by shifting their top four legs around large parts of an object and then using their lower legs to push.

Once the team used this information to build their robot, which they have dubbed ALPHA, they then employed a modular, neural-based, loco-manipulation control approach based on two of the dung beetles’ behaviors: pitch and roll for the upper two pairs of legs and biomechanics for the lower pair.

ALPHA was tested with a large hollow ball, which the robot successfully pushed to a desired location. In addition to moving the ball, the team also found that the robot could transport material within the ball.

The team believes that the robot could potentially be used in the future for search-and-rescue operations because it is able to easily traverse uneven terrain.

For more on the dung-beetle inspired robot, watch the accompanying video, which appears courtesy of Tech Xplore.