It turns out slowness may be a virtue when it comes to conservation.
Sloths in Costa Rica inspired professor Magnus Egerstedt at the Georgia Institute of Technology to create a new type of conservation robot.
“SlothBot embraces slowness as a design principle,” says Egerstedt. The slow-moving and energy-efficient robot lingers in the trees, observing “things we can only see by being present continuously for months or even years,” adds the professor.
For the next several months, visitors to the Atlanta Botanical Garden, US, can observe this new high-tech tool being put to the test, before it enters the field to save some of the world’s most endangered species.