Why would anyone build a robot sloth?
The SlothBot: A novel design for a wire-traversing robot
Roboticists built a slow, energy-saving robot that creeps along cables like a sloth to keep an eye on nature.
Inspired by sloths, which save energy by doing very little very slowly, engineers at Georgia Tech designed a robot that hangs from wires and inches along them, switching safely from one cable to another.
Moving slowly means it uses very little power, so it can hang about for ages monitoring plants and the environment. The first robot whose top selling point is that it takes its time.
Slow and steady wins the data.