Soft robotic fish moves like the real thing (w/ video)
Thursday, March 13, 2014 - 07:00
in Earth & Climate
Soft robots—which don't just have soft exteriors but are also powered by fluid flowing through flexible channels—have become a sufficiently popular research topic that they now have their own journal, Soft Robotics. In the first issue of that journal, out this month, MIT researchers report the first self-contained autonomous soft robot capable of rapid body motion: a "fish" that can execute an escape maneuver, convulsing its body to change direction in just a fraction of a second, or almost as quickly as a real fish can.