Innovations often come from unexpected places and circumstances. In 2008-2009 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) issued a challenge to roboticists. DARPA wanted roboticists to create a robot that could motivate itself to a door, get under the door and motivate itself away. This challenge led to a new field called soft robotics from a chemistry lab, not robotics or engineering, at Harvard Univ. with a pipeline that led to solutions for labor shortages in the food manufacturing industry.
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