Harvard team develops soft robot that stands up and walks on its own

12.09.2014

Harvard said the research team tested the machine in snow, submerged it in water, walked it through flames, and even ran it over with a car. It was unscathed after each test.

"Earlier versions of soft robots were all tethered, which works fine in some applications, but what we wanted to do was challenge people's concept of what a robot has to look like," said Tolley. "We think the reason people have settled on using metal and rigid materials for robots is because they're easier to model and control. This work is very inspired by nature, and we wanted to demonstrate that soft materials can also be the basis for robots."

Robots traditionally been made of metal and strung with wires and cables, but many top researchers now focus on building soft robots.

Scientists at New York University last November said they had built a flying robot designed to mimic the movements of a soft, swimming jellyfish.

Earlier this year, researchers at MIT said they had built a soft, autonomous robotic fish that can change direction in a fraction of a second. The research team said that because of the softness, or squishiness, of the machine, it can continuously change into an "infinite range" of configurations.

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