Nematodes inspire multi-terrain jumping soft robot

The device, made up of a silicone rod with a carbon-fibre spine, was made after watching high-speed video of nematodes pressing themselves into odd shapes to propel themselves forward and backward. The team’s findings are detailed in Science Robotics.

“Nematodes are amazing creatures with bodies thinner than a human hair,” said Sunny Kumar, lead co-author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE). “They don’t have legs but can jump up to 20 times their body length. That’s like me laying down and somehow leaping onto a three-story building.”

Nematodes live in the environment and within humans, insects, and animals. One way they latch onto their host before entering their bodies is by jumping. 

Using high-speed cameras, Victor Ortega-Jimenez — a former Georgia Tech research scientist who’s now a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley — watched the creatures bend their bodies into different shapes based on where they wanted to go.