This robot mimics a 450

At the heart of this remarkable endeavor is pleurocystitid, a marine organism that flourished approximately 450 million years ago.

Alongside modern-day starfish and sea urchins, these creatures belong to the echinoderm class and are known to be among the first echinoderms capable of motion using a muscular stem. Their pivotal role in the evolution of echinoderms has intrigued paleontologists worldwide despite having no current-day analogs.

Lessons from ancient motion.

Guided by fossil evidence, the team, led by Professor Phil LeDuc and Professor Carmel Majidi, meticulously crafted a robotic replica that mirrored the flexible columnar structure of pleurocystitids’ appendage leveraging computational simulations, soft robots and 3D-printed elements.

“A lot of fundamental principles of biology and nature can only fully be explained if we look back at the evolutionary timeline of how animals evolved,” explained Professor Majidi in a statement. “We are building robot analogues to study how locomotion has changed."

The researchers found that these ancient creatures likely navigated the seafloor by employing a stem that executes wide sweeping movements to propel themselves forward efficiently. Extending the length of the stem was observed to increase their speed significantly, expending additional energy.

“Researchers in the bio-inspired robotics community need to pick and choose important features worth adopting from organisms over time,” noted Richard Desatnik, Ph.D. candidate and co-first author.

Zach Patterson, co-first author and CMU alumnus, emphasized the need to decide on efficient locomotion strategies to propel their robots. “Would a starfish robot really need to use 5 limbs for locomotion or can we find a better strategy?” he questioned.

Prospects and applications.

While the team successfully resurrected pleurocystitids, some questions remain to be answered, with understanding how the surface upon which these creatures lived—be it sand or mud—impacted their movement, a significant one.

The researchers aspire to extend their Paleobionic approach to other ancient animals, including the first organisms capable of transitioning from the sea to the land, a feat unattainable with conventional robot hardware.

"Bringing a new life to something that existed nearly 500 million years ago is exciting in and of itself, but what really excites us about this breakthrough is how much we will be able to learn from it," remarked Professor LeDuc.

He underscored the collaborative nature of their work, saying, “We aren’t just looking at fossils in the ground, we are trying to better understand life through working with amazing paleontologists.”

In the age where science and technology combine to push the boundaries of what we know, Paleobionics will help us unravel the mysteries of the ancient world, one soft robotic step at a time.