Meet SlothBot - a robotic sloth to monitor endangered species

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It looks like a sloth and behaves like a sloth.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) PROFESSOR MAGNUS EGERSTEDT, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, SAYING:

"The SlothBot is unlike any other robot out there. It's a hyper-energy-efficient robot that lives amongst the trees and helps us do things like environmental monitoring and conservation work by just being present amongst the trees, measuring interesting things in the world around it."

Meet the SlothBot, a new high-tech tool on a mission to save the world's most endangered species.

Built by engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, it is currently being tested in the Atlanta Botanical Garden's forests.

But why would anyone want to create a robot that moves as slowly as a sloth?

(SOUNDBITE) (English) PROFESSOR MAGNUS EGERSTEDT, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SAYING:

"The idea for SlothBot actually came when I was in Costa Rica when I got mildly obsessed with sloths because I could not understand how these creatures could exist, right? They're just these tasty pieces of meat sitting up in the trees just waiting to be eaten by eagles or jaguars, but turns out that they are strategically slow on purpose. So, I started reading up about slowness as a design paradigm and decided, you know what? No. If I'm going to deploy robots that are out somewhere for really long periods of time they don't need to be fast. That's not how we typically do things but sometimes being slow is actually better."

The SlothBoth is powered by solar panels.

It's programmed to move only when necessary, and will locate sunlight when its batteries need recharging.

That will allow the bot to linger in the forest canopy continuously for months.

Using innovative power management technology, SlothBot moves along a cable strung between two large trees as it monitors:

temperature

weather

carbon dioxide levels

and its surroundings

(SOUNDBITE) (English) EMILY COFFEY, ATLANTA BOTANICAL GARDENS SAYING:

"I think that what it allows us to do is to break down some of those barriers in science to be able to really merge exciting technology in robotics and exciting innovations that we're making in conservation."

Currently, more than 31,000 species are threatened with extinction. That’s according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List.

At the Atlanta Botanical Garden, SlothBot operates on a single 100-foot cable, but in larger environmental applications, it will be able to switch from cable to cable to cover more territory.

If all goes well, researchers hope to use it for environmental monitoring projects in South America.