‘Soft robot’ that can split, rejoin and crawl through mazes is unveiled

Researchers have created a moving origami ‘Robotapillar’ that could be used in everything from medicine to aerospace.

This soft robot can help us study nature and other environments where hard, rigid robots cannot thrive.

Their flexibility promises to revolutionise the healthcare industry, by assisting in pioneering human surgeries, as well as being deployed to aid in search and rescue missions.

Researchers from Princeton University embedded steering technology into the ‘Robotapillar’ that improves its flexibility, breaking the mould of traditional rigid robots.

Scientists created the robot from a series of patterned cylinders that can operate independently or join to make a longer unit, which all contribute to the robot’s ability to move and steer.

The cylinders can also collapse into a flat disk, then re-expand into full form in something known as a Kresling pattern.

A Kresling pattern is an origami form that allows the robot to twist and expand which is the basis of the robot being able to crawl and change in any direction. 

The ‘Robotapillar’ is a soft robot that can bend and twist (Picture: Frank Wojciechowski)

By controlling which segments to fold, bend or expand, the ‘Robotapillar’ can twist, turn and navigate tight corners with precision, as well as change shape and squeeze through narrow obstacles. 

But this is more than just a robot that can wiggle.

The robot can pick up cargo, transport items, crawl into hard-to-reach places and could be the future of engineering, being applied from medicinal devices, to aerospace and construction.

It is hoped the robot will be able to grasp organs during transplants, or perhaps one day navigate parts of the body through key hole surgeries.

Princeton University professor Dr Glaucio Paulino said: ‘We have created a bio-inspired plug-and-play soft modular origami robot… This is a very promising technology with potential translation to robots that can grow, heal, and adapt on demand.’

Tuo Zhao, postdoctoral researcher at Princeton, added: ‘Each segment can be an individual unit, and they can communicate with each other and assemble on command.

‘They can separate easily, and we use magnets to connect them.’

Researchers at North Carolina State (NC State) helped to develop a way to control the bending and folding motions that steer the robot. 

They used two materials that shrink or expand differently when heated and added them into the creases of the Kresling pattern, as well as installed a thin stretchable heater made of silver nanowire network along each fold. 

The researchers were influenced by origami(Picture: Getty)

Then an electronic current on the nanowire heats up the control strips to introduce a fold, and therefore can precisely control the folding and bending to drive the robot’s movement and steering.

Professor Yong Zhu, of NC State said: ‘Silver nanowire is an excellent material to fabricate stretchable conductors. Stretchable conductors are building blocks for a variety of stretchable electronic devices including stretchable heaters.

‘Here we used the stretchable heater as the actuation mechanism for the bending and folding motions. 

The robot currently has limited speed, but they working to increase the speed in later models, as well as experiment with different shapes, patterns, and instability to improve both the speed and the steering.

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.