While gathering water striders from the wild for their studies, folks from MIT indavertently captured a few water snails. Curiosity about their means of locomotion led them to begin the Robosnail project. This video from 2003 is the result of that project.
Snails have 3 modes of locomotion on solid surfaces: forward undulating motion, backward undulating motion, and galloping.
Robosnail 1 was built using the principle that a membrane undulating over a solid surface will push fluid through a thin gap in between. As the membrane undulates backwards, the resultant force on the membrane (in this case, the snail's foot) pushes the snail forward. We later found that most snails move in a slightly different way. However, there are a few species that use a method of locomotion similar to that of Robosnail 1, and in any case, Robosnail 1 demonstrates a valid method of locomotion.
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