Burrowing robot inspired by plants and animals

The advance from researchers at UC Santa Barbara and Georgia Institute of Technology is detailed in Science Robotics

According to UCSB, the technology enables new applications for fast, precise and minimally invasive movement underground and lays mechanical foundations for new types of robots.

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"The biggest challenges with moving through the ground are simply the forces involved," said Nicholas Naclerio, lead author and graduate student researcher at UCSB. "If you're trying to move through the ground, you have to push the soil, sand or other medium out of the way.”

Gaining a mechanical understanding of how plants and animals have mastered subterranean navigation opens up many possibilities for science and technology, added Daniel Goldman, Dunn Family Professor of Physics at Georgia Tech.

"Discovery of principles by which diverse organisms successfully swim and dig within granular media can lead to development of new kinds of mechanisms and robots that can take advantage of such principles," he said. "And reciprocally, development of a robot with such capabilities can inspire new animal studies as well as point to new phenomena in the physics of granular substrates."