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 ...

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 ...

Over the past decades, a growing number of robotics teams have started developing modular robots inspired by the ancient paper-folding art of origami. More recently, some of these teams started ...

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, ...

These configurable bots could launch flat and then be assembled in space. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. A newly designed ...

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 ...

Imagine soft robots scurrying through rubble with the agility of geckos or leaping over obstacles with the dynamism of frogs—capabilities that would prove invaluable in post-disaster rescue and ...

(Nanowerk News) Engineers at Princeton and North Carolina State University have combined ancient paperfolding and modern materials science to create a soft robot that bends and twists through mazes ...

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 ...