Robot learns to ‘sidewind’ up dunes

Researchers in the US have described precisely how "sidewinder" rattlesnakes climb up sand dunes.

They decorated the snakes with reflective markers and filmed them climbing an artificial dune.

Information from those recordings was then used to program a slithering robot, built by engineers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

This video shows a snake climbing the steepest slope it can manage successfully (an angle of 31 degrees) and then the robot, using the findings to ascend a dune at 20 degrees.

The study appears in the journal Science.

Footage courtesy of Hamidreza Marvi and Henry Astley, Georgia Institute of Technology