This might not be robots… quite, but I came across the Lunocet (pictured above) site completely by accident and was immediately struck by how brilliant an idea this was. Beautiful, effective and why on earth hadn’t any one thought of it before?
Of course, on further reading (the Scientific American article), I discovered that, while Ted Ciamillo of the Lunacet has taken his design direct from nature, DARPA and the Segway team have been exploring a slightly more opaque link with oscillating foils powered by a slight squat movement, using the larger leg muscles rather than ankles/calves and giving 75% efficiency and also twice olympic swimmer speed. How cool is that?
I’m looking forward to spotting my first human breaching during the ocean migration season.
Check the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfzDep6wpkE&eurl