EPFL Biorobotics Laboratory (Auke Ijspeert) · legged machine
Salamandra robotica II
A 1.1 m salamander robot with a flexible body and four legs that can move between land and water. It keeps moving even if cut into parts.
- Price
- —Not published
- Height
- —Not published
- Weight
- 2.5 kgHeavier than 12%
- Payload
- —Not published
- Speed
- 1.9 km/hFaster than 47%
- Battery
- —Not published
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Why it matters
An amphibious robot that walks on land and swims, switching gaits with a control system modelled on a salamander's spinal cord.
Real-world use
None; collaboration with University of Bordeaux neurobiologists
Timeline
- First shown
- 2013
- Released
- Not yet
Maker
EPFL Biorobotics Laboratory (Auke Ijspeert)University lab · Lausanne, SwitzerlandHow it stacks up
Against other legged & novel that publish the figure. Pick a measure.
Salamandra robotica II is heavier than 12% of the 25 other legged & novel that publish a weight. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
Salamandra robotica II is faster than 47% of the 19 other legged & novel that publish a speed. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
Salamandra robotica II has more joints than 38% of the 16 other legged & novel that publish a joints. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
Not published by the maker: height, payload, battery, price.
Public attention
How much public attention Salamandra robotica II gets, from open data.
- No Wikipedia article of its own yet
- No recent press stories listed yet
Measures how much people read and write about a robot, not how good it is. Measured 2026-10-14; same method for every robot. How it is measured
What’s inside
The parts the company has talked about publicly.
- Movement
- Walks on legs · 12 joints
- How it runs
- Assisted. A person steered it remotely while its built-in rhythm generator produced the walking and swimming motions.
- Actuators & motors
- 12 Faulhaber DC motors (2.83 W) with custom plastic gearboxes: 8 body DoF and 4 foldable limbs.
- Sensors & vision
- Motor rotary encoders; infrared sensor in the head.
- Compute
- ARM LPC2129 60 MHz main controller with an 868 MHz radio link; eight PIC18F2580 and 12 PIC16F876A microcontrollers in the modules.
- Battery & power
- Each module has its own lithium-ion cells (seven 600 mAh and two 1,200 mAh); the robot keeps working if split apart.
- Materials & build
- Polyurethane resin.
- AI & software
- Central-pattern-generator model of the salamander spinal cord, written in C.
- Other details
- About 1.1 m and 2.5 kg; walks, crawls and swims at about 1.9 km/h, more than twice as fast as its predecessor in water. Shown at Innorobo 2013 in Lyon.
From the maker
Salamandra robotica II is the only machine from EPFL Biorobotics Laboratory (Auke Ijspeert) in the atlas.
Watch Salamandra robotica II
Made, sold and where
Unit counts are usually company figures; analysts often disagree.
- Price
- Not published
- How to get one
- No official buying page found
- Built
- Research robot
- Sold or delivered
- not sold
- Where it is sold or used
- EPFL Biorobotics Laboratory, Lausanne, Switzerland
- Customers and pilots
- None; collaboration with University of Bordeaux neurobiologists
Sources
Figures come from press coverage. Every link below backs something on this page.
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