14 DAY TRIAL // From Star Wars to Terminator, all the robots are metallic and rigid, but that's a movie clich? as, in fact, the robots of the future could be entirely soft-bodied.
A team at Tufts University is on the way of developing mushier and more animal mimicking robots in order to increase their flexibility and utility in domains ranging from medicine to space exploration.
The current automated, anthropomorphic, metal-edged robots are employed in many activities, like manufacturing and medical procedures, but these qualities limit their options compared to living systems.
"Many machines incorporate flexible materials at their joints and can be tremendously fast, strong and powerful, but there is no current technology that can match the performance of an animal moving through natural terrain," said Barry Trimmer, co-director of the Biomimetic Technologies for Soft-bodied Robots project at Tufts University. "One of the fundamental differences between machines and animals is the material of which they are made," said Trimmer, leader of the soft-robot initiative.
"A major characteristic that distinguishes man-made structures from biological ones is the preponderance of stiff materials," he said. "In contrast, living systems may contain stiff materials such as bone or cuticle, but their fundamental building blocks are soft and elastic."
A soft-bodied organism such as a caterpillar or worm is not restricted in its movements by joints; this type of organism can bend or crumple freely in any direction.
Trimmer is investigating the neural circuitry that permits these animals to control their complex movements with their very simple brains in order to design soft-bodied robots. "It is very hard to make soft devices that move around and can be precisely controlled," said Soft-bodied Robots project co-director David Kaplan. "This is the fundamental reason why robots currently move like robots instead of lifelike animals."
Robots with more fluid movement would be able to go over textured surfaces, crawl along wires, or penetrate into confined spaces. "Soft-bodied robots could make many dangerous surgeries much safer and less painful," Trimmer said.
"They could also be used by NASA to repair space stations by reaching places that astronauts can't, perform more complicated tasks in industry that require flexibility of movement, help in hazardous environments like nuclear reactors and landmine detection, and squeeze more efficiently into tight spaces."