A group of researchers outfitted a small rover bot with a penguin disguise to better approach a colony of emperor penguins. The researchers watched from 650 feet away as the penguins allowed the rover access to their nesting area.
There are a few different videos that have popped up this week from the article recently published in Nature Methods. Yvon Le Maho from the University of Strasbourg heads the team of researchers and has done most of the public relations work.
http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmeth.3173.html#affil-auth
The penguin rovers are a great engineering solution to a scientific problem. If researchers are entering the penguin space then they are changing the environment and more than likely changing the bird behavior and the vital signs.
It's very interesting to see a project done with a large group of scientists and engineers working together and then see their contributions. Some members designed and performed the study in the field, while others analyzed the data, ran prestudies for the rovers, developed the robot itself, or helped to develop the journal article.
Despite the exposure being given to this experiment, there isn't a lot of technical data available. The penguinbot is outfitted with sensors to check the birds' heart rate and vital statistics but otherwise seems to be a standard remote control chassis.
This robot is the fifth prototype used by the team that studied the emperor penguins in Adelie Land, Antartica but penguin robots aren't necessarily a new thing. Last year the Discovery Channel and BBC ran their Penguins - Spy in the Huddle documentary that showed several different hidden camera methods of filming different types of penguins.
http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmeth.3173.html#affil-auth