On the horizon: A new generation of robots made of soft
materials and capable of performing tasks too complex for conventional robots
A five-year grant from the National Science Foundation to
Tufts University will help launch an interdisciplinary graduate program to
enable scientists and engineers to create soft-bodied robots.
Inspired by squishy, flexible creatures like the common
caterpillar, the researchers from the Schools of Arts and Sciences and
Engineering will develop soft-bodied robots that will be continuously
deformable and capable of collapsing and crumpling into small volumes. They
will have capabilities that are not currently available in conventional robots
that are rigid, mechanical machines including climbing textured surfaces and
irregular objects, crawling along ropes and wires, or burrowing into complex
confined spaces.