Elastic robots pass the eqqshell test

摘要

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, George Whitesides is developing both pneumatic robots and starfish-like automatons made of elastic materials that stretch and slide through tight spaces. Their niche, he says, will be in tasks such as surgery and search and rescue -"anything where you don't want a set of grippers ripping into you," he says. His team has tested their elastic gripper by having it pick up an uncooked egg. Even the most precise metal grippers would struggle not to crack the shell, but soft robots avoid this as they simply mould themselves to an object's shape. Such robots "will find new tasks to do" that their metal and plastic counterparts cannot manage, Whitesides says.