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read moreWiggly robot squeezes through tight places
William Atkins
Wednesday, 30 November 2011 00:07
U.S. researchers at Harvard University have created a soft robot that performs like squid, starfish, and worms - such creatures without hard skeletons. Watch it wiggle around on YouTube.
Drs. George Whitesides and Robert Shepherd headed the team from Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The robot was manufactured with soft materials and its movements are made possible with compressed air. If it needs to get through a small space, some of the air is removed to make it thinner in size.
See a YouTube video of the wiggly robot at 'Soft Robot Walking and Crawling.'
For more on the story, please read the November 29, 2011 IEEE Spectrum article 'Freaky Boneless Robot Walks on Soft Legs.'
The article states, 'There's just something about those bulbous air muscles that soft robots use that creeps me out, but it's hard to deny that as the designs get more and more refined, the robots themselves are getting capable enough to actually, you know, start doing stuff."
And, "Take this soft robot from Harvard, for example: it not only walks, it knows several different gaits and can deflate to stuff itself through tiny little gaps.'
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