Engineers Discover Soft Robots to Reach Inaccessible Places

An interdisciplinary team of University of Minnesota Twin Cities scientists and engineers has succeeded to develop a first-of-its-kind, plant-inspired extrusion process that allows synthetic material growth. This new development will allow researchers to develop better soft robots that can navigate hard-to-reach places, complicated terrain, and potentially areas within the human body. The paper is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary, high-impact scientific journal.

"This is the first time these concepts have been fundamentally demonstrated," uttered Chris Ellison, a lead author of the paper and professor in the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. "Developing new ideas of manufacturing are paramount for the competitiveness of our country and for uncovering new products to people. On the robotic side, robots are performing more and more in dangerous, remote environments, and these are the kinds of areas where this work could have an impact."

Soft robotics is an approaching field where robots are generated of soft, pliable materials as opposed to rigid ones. Soft-growing robots can create new material and "grow" as they move. These machines could be very useful for operations in remote areas where humans can not reach, for example, inspecting or installing tubes underground or navigating inside the human body for biomedical applications.