  Robots are becoming increasingly essential for traversing complex
environments such as disaster areas, extraterrestrial terrains, and marine
environments. Yet, their potential is often limited by mobility and
adaptability constraints. In nature, various animals have evolved finely tuned
designs and anatomical features that enable efficient locomotion in diverse
environments. Sea turtles, for instance, possess specialized flippers that
facilitate both long-distance underwater travel and adept maneuvers across a
range of coastal terrains. Building on the principles of embodied intelligence
and drawing inspiration from sea turtle hatchings, this paper examines the
critical interplay between a robot's physical form and its environmental
interactions, focusing on how morphological traits and locomotive behaviors
affect terrestrial navigation. We present a bio-inspired robotic system and
study the impacts of flipper/body morphology and gait patterns on its
terrestrial mobility across diverse terrains ranging from sand to rocks.
Evaluating key performance metrics such as speed and cost of transport, our
experimental results highlight adaptive designs as crucial for multi-terrain
robotic mobility to achieve not only speed and efficiency but also the
versatility needed to tackle the varied and complex terrains encountered in
real-world applications.
