Caterbot? Robatapillar? It crawls with ease through loops and bends

Engineers at Princeton and North Carolina State University have combined ancient paperfolding and modern materials science to create a soft robot that bends and twists through mazes with ease.

Zhao said the robot's ability to assemble and split up on the move allows the system to work as a single robot or a swarm. "We have created a bio-inspired plug-and-play soft modular origami robot enabled by electrothermal actuation with highly bendable and adaptable heaters," Paulino said."This is a very promising technology with potential translation to robots that can grow, heal, and adapt on demand."

"Silver nanowire is an excellent material to fabricate stretchable conductors. Stretchable conductors are building blocks for a variety of stretchable electronic devices including stretchable heaters. Here we used the stretchable heater as the actuation mechanism for the bending and folding motions" said Yong Zhu, the Andrew A. Adams Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at N.C. State and one of the lead researchers.

Zhao said the researchers also plan to experiment with different shapes, patterns, and instability to improve both the speed and the steering. Support for the research was provided in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.A new gelatinous robot that crawls, powered by nothing more than temperature change and clever design, brings 'a kind of intelligence' to the field of soft ...

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