It's a Dog's Life in the Biophysics Lab

In Professor of Physics and Astronomy Suzanne Amador Kane’s lab, two small robotic dogs named Anubis and Horus walk endless miles on a circular track. While Sisyphean in nature, their destinationless journey has an ultimate goal: advancing the next generation of robotic locomotion. 

Anubis and Horus’ caretakers are rising seniors Deep Patel ’25 and Willow Kohn ’25. They regularly put the dogs, just slightly larger than the palm of your hand, through trials on the track, which features interchangeable textures, like sandpaper or plywood. Together, they’re continuing work initiated by Sophie Frem ’23 and Aidan Bannon ’24 as they search for the ideal point of friction and foot shape, which, for robots, have not evolved much beyond a simple rubber nub. 

“If I were to ask you, without any prior knowledge,” Patel questions, “if you think you'd be able to run faster on sandpaper with durable feet or a very slippery surface, say linoleum that's been freshly polished? What would you say?”

As anyone who has ever slid across their hardwood floors in socks can attest, the answer seems obvious: sandpaper. However, Patel and Kohn’s research points the other way. They say that the higher the friction ratio, the harder it is for the dogs to walk. As their work continues, they’re tweaking the gait of the open-source, programmable dogs, which are manufactured by the robotics company Petoi, and recently switched to a linear track. 

“In the past, we’ve referred to the circular track as a treadmill, but it’s really not. A more crude analogy would be a torture device,” Patel jokes. 

Ultimately, Kohn says, they hope the research they’re conducting at Haverford will inform the next generation of robots, specifically their feet. In addition, she says of the biological aspect of their work, we may also learn more about why animals have evolved the way they have. 

“We’ve seen companies like Boston Dynamics introduce these really cool robots that can walk on different substrates, but there’s still not a great way for them to transition between different materials,” Kohn says. “We want to see if we can get robot feet to be more bio-inspired, whether it’s articulated, claw, or hoof. These quadrupedal robots are based on animals, so why haven’t their feet evolved past a cylindrical knob?”

Luckily for Anubis and Horus — named after the Egyptian gods — it’s not all hard work and endless walking in the lab. Patel and Kohn know how to have fun with them, as evidenced by the video they created for a social media contest hosted by Petoi to highlight its OpenCat robotics framework. The video, which won the audience choice award, offers a glimpse into a typical day for the dogs at the Marian E. Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center and shows off Patel and Kohn’s programming prowess. In it, Anubis and Horus wave to the camera, do backflips, and even chow down on a slice of pizza. 

“It shows we have a lot of fun in our lab,” Kohn says. “There’s a lot of comradery, and it’s not always work, work, work.” 

Patel and Kohn’s prize for winning the Petoi audience choice award is a Nybble Q, an updated model of Petoi’s robotic cat. Here’s hoping all the robots get along.