How Squishy Would You Like Your Robot?



The MIT approach involves taking a material or structure that’s inherently soft and modifying it with another material that can phase change between hard and soft states. In this case, MIT is using a scaffold made of foam that’s been coated with wax. Wax, being wax, transitions between solid and liquid at a relatively low temperature. When the wax is cold and solid, the foam structure is rigid, but if the wax is heated to soften it, the entire foam structure becomes soft as well.

The researchers also demonstrated that by selectively deforming parts of a structure, they could create joints and make the structure move using a cable (as seen in the video). We’re guessing that as a next step several of these deformable structures could be combined to create a robot that can crawl and squeeze into tight spaces.



The researchers say that robots like these would be ideal for search and rescue scenarios, where you’d need a lot of compliance and flexibility for crawling around and through jumbled piles of rubble. They also suggest that robots like these would be great for crawling around inside your body, where they’d be able to “reach a particular point without damaging any of the organs or vessels along the way.” Thanks for that, we squishy humans definitely appreciate it!