Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a new gelatinous robot that crawls, powered by nothing more than temperature change and clever design. The inchworm-inspired robot brings “a kind of intelligence” to the field of soft robotics.
These worm-like robots are designed to crawl through the body and target the source of illness, delivering a high dose of medication and possibly replacing pills or intravenous injections that can cause life-threatening side effects.
Robots are typically comprised almost exclusively of hard materials like metals and plastics. This has been a fundamental obstacle in the push to create robots ideal for human biomedical advancements. Water-based gels are one of the most promising materials in the field of soft robotics. Previous research has demonstrated that gels that swell or shrink in response to temperature can be used to create…
Inchworm-inspired gelbots move without batteries
