Salamandra robotica is a triathlete. She walks. She crawls. She swims. One of very few robots capable of multiple modes of locomotion, this salamanderlike machine has demonstrated that it may have been relatively easy for early animals to take their first steps on land. From a neurological perspective, inducing a transition from swimming to walking is unexpectedly straightforward, explains Auke Ijspeert, a physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
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