High-speed aerial grasping with soft claws
Researchers from MIT’s SPARK Lab have developed a drone capable of high-speed aerial grasping using four soft finger-esque projections and an onboard perception system.
Caterbot? Robatapillar? It crawls with ease through loops and bends
Researchers at Princeton and North Carolina State University in the USA have developed a soft robot using origami techniques to enhance its flexibility and control.
Acer i-Seed: the first eco-friendly fluorescent artificial seed for monitoring soil temperature by using drones
From Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia – IIT 29/11/23 A new kind of artificial seed to sense environmental parameters without impacting on the health of environment is the invention coming from the IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) in Genova, Italy. The soft robot, named Acer i-Seed, is inspired by natural Acer seeds and […]
Origami sensors could be wrapped around your organs to detect disease
From University of Southern California 28/08/23 Researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering looked to origami to create new sensors that could someday be employed to detect deformations in organs and also for use in wearables and soft robotics. Their paper, “High-Stretchability and Low-Hysteresis Strain Sensors Using Origami-Inspired 3D Mesostructures,” featured in Science Advances […]
Shape-shifting 3D display powered by soft robotic muscles
By Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems 04/08/23 Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a soft shape display, a robot that can rapidly and precisely change its surface geometry to interact with objects and liquids, react to human touch, and display letters and numbers […]
Algae-powered bioluminescent soft robots
By Charles Carter, 22/09/22 Innovators from Jacobs School of Engineering, UC San Diego have developed soft robots that use bioluminescent algae to glow in the dark. They bots give off light when experiencing mechanical stress, such as being squished, stretched, twisted or bent e.g. when they swim around. They could have potential applications in dark […]