Robots are becoming increasingly essential for traversing complex environments such as disaster areas, extraterrestrial terrains, and marine environments. Yet, their potential is often limited by mobility and adaptability constraints. In nature, various animals have evolved finely tuned designs and anatomical features that enable efficient locomotion in diverse environments. Sea turtles, for instance, possess specialized flippers that facilitate both long-distance underwater travel and adept maneuvers across a range of coastal terrains. Building on the principles of embodied intelligence and drawing inspiration from sea turtle hatchings, this paper examines the critical interplay between a robot's physical form and its environmental interactions, focusing on how morphological traits and locomotive behaviors affect terrestrial navigation. We present a bio-inspired robotic system and study the impacts of flipper/body morphology and gait patterns on its terrestrial mobility across diverse terrains ranging from sand to rocks. Evaluating key performance metrics such as speed and cost of transport, our experimental results highlight adaptive designs as crucial for multi-terrain robotic mobility to achieve not only speed and efficiency but also the versatility needed to tackle the varied and complex terrains encountered in real-world applications.

翻译：机器人在穿越复杂环境（如灾区、外星地形和海洋环境）方面正变得日益重要。然而，其潜力常受限于移动性与适应性约束。在自然界中，各种动物进化出了精细调整的设计与解剖学特征，使其能够在多样环境中高效运动。例如，海龟拥有特化的鳍状肢，既便于长距离水下旅行，也擅长在多种海岸地形中灵活机动。基于具身智能原理并受海龟幼体启发，本文研究了机器人物理形态与其环境交互之间的关键相互作用，重点关注形态特征与运动行为如何影响陆地导航。我们提出了一种仿生机器人系统，并研究了在不同地形（从沙地到岩石）上，其鳍状肢/身体形态与步态模式对陆地移动能力的影响。通过评估速度与运输成本等关键性能指标，我们的实验结果强调了自适应设计对于多地形机器人移动能力至关重要，这不仅是为了实现速度与效率，更是为了获得应对现实应用中多变复杂地形所需的通用性。