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Watch the world's creepiest robot animals in action

The Terminator will have a surprisingly large number of pets once the dust has settled after the war between man and machine - humans have been busy creating suitably creepy metal ‘beasts’ for years.

The Terminator will have a surprisingly large number of pets once the dust has settled after the war between man and machine - humans have been busy creating suitably creepy metal ‘beasts’ for years.

Some metal animals are built to exploit the strengths of different creatures for environments Man finds difficult - such as a giant, lumbering simian space explorer being built in a German lab.

Others are so pointless that they’ve become the focus of politcal attempts to stop scientists spending money on utterly daft projects - step forward, robosquirrel.

Below, we’ve rounded up the world’s weirdest robot beasts - from terrifying, to unsettling, to just plain annoying.

 

Robot ape

iStruct
iStruct


The German iStruct robot lumbers across landscapes on four limbs, with the heavy, rhythic walk of a gorilla - thanks to a an “active” artificial spine, which ensures the four-legged robot is more mobile on rough terrain.

German robot experts wanted to exploit the unique four-legged ‘shuffle’ of gorillas to navigate terrain humans find difficult - such as the cratered surfaces of distant planets.

The spine works alongside other components to create a complex biomechanical system, it’s creators say - the robot even shuffles to balance itself on moving surfaces, shifting its centre of gravity as the ground tilts beneath it.

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“One of the benefits of walking machines is their ability to exert force in all directions and at different scales on the environment,” DFKI says.

The robot’s feet include 43 pressure sensors, plus a distance sensor in the heel and an accelerometer, all monitoring the robot’s gait as it walks.

 

Robot cheetah

In action
In action

Robophobes, please look the other way now - this robotic cheetah runs exactly like a cheetah, will eventually hit 30mph (faster than any fleeing human prey), and can already bound over obstacles.

The only thing missing (thankfully) is metal teeth to shred its prey.

MIT says the algorithm which drives the cheetah will help us understand how animals run - and how certain human sprinters hit the speeds they do.

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‘Many sprinters, like Usain Bolt, don’t cycle their legs really fast,’ Sangbae Kim, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.

‘They actually increase their stride length by pushing downward harder and increasing their ground force, so they can fly more while keeping the same frequency.’

In treadmill experiments, the team found that the robot handled slight bumps in its path, maintaining its speed even as it ran over a foam obstacle.


Robot snake

Sidewinder
Sidewinder

As if making robots which hurdle across obstacles far faster than a human can run wasn’t creepy enough, another team has created a robot which wriggles up sand dunes like a venomous snake.

The reason wasn’t simply to creep people out - the modular snake robot finally allowed scientists to understand how sidewinders climbed up dunes.

In tests on an archaeological mission in the Red Sea caves, the wriggling beast has to move in a strange, wavy pattern to climb.

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The study could pave the way for future robots to navigate hazardous terrain - or just to really, really freak out Indiana Jones.

‘Our initial idea was to use the robot as a physical model to learn what the snakes experienced,’said Daniel Goldman, an associate professor in Georgia Tech's School of Physics. ‘By studying the animal and the physical model simultaneously, we learned important general principles that allowed us to not only understand the animal, but also to improve the robot.’


Robot squirrels

Robosquirrel
Robosquirrel

The ‘robosquirrel’ has become the focus of a battle by right-wing American politicians to stop scientists spending money on stupid stuff.

San Diego univerity researchers argue that the metal squirrels are crucial to understanding communications between predator and prey - in this case, rattlesnakes.

The robo-rodents bravely endured the bites of the poisonous reptiles to help scientists unravel a mystery - why squirrels’ tails warm up when confronted with one of the deadly predators.

Once the researchers have located a foraging snake, they set up the robosquirrel and a video camera to record the scene and retreat behind a blind.

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The snakes seem to accept the robosquirrel as real. One of their videos shows a snake biting the robot's head.

The squirrels were created to help scientists understand how squirrels use infrared to signal to rattlesnakes - heating up their tails to 'signal' to the predators.