Building a sphere with twenty legs based on pure maths is a clever bit of engineering. The fact that it can keep going even if it loses a few limbs is brilliant. Most tech breaks the second something small goes wrong, so making something that actually stands up to a bit of a beating is a massive win.

But I do have a few doubts about using it to monitor forests without bothering the animals. If a giant, headless mechanical sea urchin with twenty cameras started rolling towards me in the woods, I’d run a bloody mile. It sounds terrifying.

Plus, keeping twenty separate motors running sounds like a nightmare. If dirt gets inside those joints when it's rolling through sand, it's going to get stuck pretty fast.