Slothbot

Magnus Egerstedt of Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering watched sloths in Costa Rica and was inspired to create a robot that was just as energy-efficient, if a bit slow. The result is SlothBot, a robot that slowly monitors the environment at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

Built by robotics engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology to take advantage of the low-energy lifestyle of real sloths, SlothBot demonstrates how being slow can be ideal for certain applications. Powered by solar panels and using innovative power management technology, SlothBot moves along a cable strung between two large trees as it monitors temperature, weather, carbon dioxide levels, and other information in the Garden’s 30-acre midtown Atlanta forest.

All that, and it's cute, too! (via Laughing Squid)