Researchers say that robots made of soft plastic, modeled after worms
or squid, may have capabilities that their metal peers lack, and
they've made a four-legged prototype.
The squishy 'bot of the Harvard
University researchers, as shown in an article posted Monday by the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was fashioned from an
elastomeric polymer top layer, filled with a series of air chambers,
affixed to a firmer but still flexible lower layer. Inflating chambers
in the rear legs, then the "spine," then the fore legs, and then
deflating them in the same order produced an undulating forward walk.
Soft robots would be cheaper than hard
robots, the researchers said, and less discombobulated by difficult
terrain—and they don't dent. In a demonstration, this robot approached
and squirmed under a barrier 0.8 inches off the ground. Robot limbo,
anyone?
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