Squishy robots, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

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Squishy Robots

Published on Jul 14, 2014

A new phase-changing material built from wax and foam developed by researchers at MIT is capable of switching between hard and soft states.

Robots built from this material would be able to operate more like biological systems with applications ranging from difficult search and rescue operations, squeezing through rubble looking for survivors, to deformable surgical robots that could move through the body to reach a particular point without damaging any of the organs or vessels along the way.

Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News
Additional video clips courtesy of Nadia Cheng

 

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"Squishy robots"
Phase-changing material could allow even low-cost robots to switch between hard and soft states. Watch Video

by Helen Knight
July 14, 2014

 

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The future is... squishy robots?

Published on Jul 28, 2014

Robots aren't all rigid and upright...or at least they don't need to be! In order to work in changing environments that may be in flux or unpredictable, robots should be more adaptive. This is where a new material developed by MIT mechanical engineers comes in. It is able to move between states to sometimes be strong, and other times flexible. How does it work? Kim Horcher, Tim Frisch, and Dan Casey (Nerdist.com) discuss!