If a soft-bodied robot uses rigid actuators to move its body, then it isn't really soft now, is it? An experimental new caterpillar-inspired bot gets around that conundrum by using soft, collapsible ...

Each unit has multiple points to which another unit can attach itself: 18 of them, to be precise, which means that just two ...

Engineers created a catapillar-shaped robot that splits into segments and reassembles, hauls cargo, and crawls through twisting courses. Engineers at Princeton and North Carolina State University have ...

Engineers at EPFL have demonstrated a modular robot that becomes more resilient as it gains more modules by sharing critical ...

The next generation of soft robots might be folding and sliding as effortlessly as living tissue, say a team of engineers who have created “magnetic muscles” with 3D printing. Filling elastic, ...

Researchers at Dartmouth College have created modular robots that can assemble into structures and move through real-world terrain. Built from cube-shaped blocks, the robots combine rigid rods with ...

A crawler robot made with the miura-ori origami pattern. The dark sections are affixed with thin "magnetic muscles" made by co-extruding rubber polymer and ferromagnetic particles, which move the ...

A new 3-D printing technique can create paper-thin "magnetic muscles," which can be applied to origami structures to make them move. By infusing rubber-like elastomers with materials called ...

The robot is made of segments that can fold into a flat disk and extend into a cylinder. Partial folds bend the robot and allow for motion and steering. Engineers at Princeton and North Carolina State ...