In our animal biomechanics and biorobotics lab, we are interested in the relationship between form, function and ecology of living and extinct animals. Our projects focus on the different ways that biomechanics of movement can limit the pathways available for evolution.

Australia offers a variety of unique animal species and many of the iconic ones are study species in our lab. From Biomechanics of Kangaroo hopping using computer simulations over studying invasive versus native species comparing their locomotion to determine potential advantages in ecological niches on to equipping the large perentie lizards in the big red deserts of Australia with GPS and accelerometers to study their 24/7 behaviors and roaming. 

Not only the variety of study species is large in our lab, so are the methods we use.
Whether it is the use of drones to film animals from above, or the use of high-speed cameras to get a high-resolution video of the locomotor performance of the animal in 2D and 3D. Or whether it is the use of physical robotic models or computational muscle-skeletal modelling. Whether it is tracing animals’ movements with accelerometers and using machine learning to predict their behaviour or tracking the movements using markerless pose-estimation based on deep learning to study detailed kinematics. If kinematics alone is not enough – don’t worry! We do also record force data of animals running, climbing and hopping to investigate their movement dynamics.