Harvard scientists just showed that they successfully created an utterly boneless robot, where boneless is an epithet that applies both literally and figuratively. Looking a lot like a starfish, or a four-legged, carapace-less, white slug (loosely at least), it is easy enough to guess what the white, wriggly thing can do.
The scientific term for the squiddly beast is
multigait soft robot.
Simply, it navigates terrain that stiffer bots can't travel, like squeezing through narrow areas, and can cover 1.5 meters every minute.
The researchers even showed
videos where the rubber plastic, embedded with inflatable/deflatable air pockets, smoothly slipped under a pane of glass.
Alas, the downside is that the boneless robot is remarkably vulnerable to harm, although easier to build, with a 3D printer mold.
We'll go ahead and dub this the white creeper of the unreachable depths, or The Boneless One.
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