The Natural Robotics Contest

The 2022 Competition

Each entry was scored independently by our judges. The winner this year was 'Robo-fish' by Eleanor Mackinstosh. Eleanor's design took thoughtful inspiration from nature and had an important purpose - sampling and tracking microplastics in the water.

We took her idea and turned it into a fully 3D-printed fish with a set of mesh lined gills, which Eleanor has affectionately named 'Gillbert'. The robot is now an ongoing piece of robotics research! You can see Eleanor's idea and the robot it became in the gallery below. If you want more detail on the contest and the robot, you can read our research paper.

Contest Submissions

As well as the winning design, there were many more great ideas, covering a broad range of topics, animal types and use cases. We were very impressed with the thought and care that went into many of the submitted designs. Some of the judge's favourites are below.

See you next year!

The next contest will be announced in spring 2023. Sign up below to be notified when the new contest opens.

Meet the Roboticists

The winning entry will be selected and built by a group of senior engineers and scientists with years of experience bringing robots to life.
You can take a look at the team below. Click any member to see some of their work.

Or watch the video below to see some of the bioinspired robots built by the contest team.