Yale University roboticists have developed a way for soft robots to replicate some of the most unsettling things animals and insects can do, such as reptiles amputating their own limbs or ants temporarily attaching themselves to form legs.
In one demo video, you can see a soft quadruped robot crawling when a falling rock catches its hind legs. The reversible joints that attach the legs are heated by an electric current, allowing the robot to free itself from the legs and escape. Although not shown in the video, the limbs can also be reattached.
In the second video, a single crawler robot cannot cross the gap between the tables, but three robots fuse together (also using joints that have been heated and softened by the electric current) and cross the gap as one unit.
This capability is not entirely new to robotics (especially modular robotics), but according to Spectrum IEEE, existing systems based on mechanical connections and magnets are inherently rigid. The innovation here is in a joint made using a material called a double-continuous thermoplastic foam and a sticky polymer. This combination allows the joint to be melted, detached, and then reattached.
The roboticists describe their work in a paper titled “Self-Amputating and Interfusing Machines” published in Advanced Materials. They argue that their technique could lead to “future robots capable of radical shape-shifting via mass changes through autonomous cutting and interfusing.”
Is this more or less bizarre than a smiling robot face with living skin? You tell me.
