Safari robot snaps feasting lion up close

Paul Marks, senior technology reporter

(Image: William Burrard-Lucas)

The low hum rumbling across Kenya's Masai Mara isn't the sound of a distant herd of wildebeest on their annual migration?- it's the trundling motor of an armoured robot called Beetlecam 2 as it sneaks up on a pride of feasting lions.

Built by London-based wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas, the robotic camera affords a view of the big cats unlike anything shot from distance with a long-focus lens. "The large depth of field and close-up ground level perspective is one you don't see every day," he says. "You get a real sense of the animal in its own environment."

After teaching himself how to make wheeled, remote-controlled robots from courses online?- "I've a physics degree so I understand this stuff"?- Burrard-Lucas built Beetlecam 1, a fabric-covered robot camera (below, left). But that "got beaten up by predatory lionesses and inquisitive cubs" far too often, so he designed a follow-up, Beetlecam 2 (below, right).

Beetlecam 2 has an armoured carapace made of aluminium and fibreglass, and carries a ?5000 remote-controlled camera. One day before dawn last August, Burrard-Lucas sent the machine 50 metres from his off-road vehicle to snap this lion breakfasting on a wildebeest?- the orange glow of the sunrise spectacularly lighting up its mane.

The next targets of this man-machine duo? Close-ups of leopards and Ethiopian wolves.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1d4ce35e/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A120C0A30Csafari0Erobot0Ecaptures0Ebreakfas0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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