Silicone-based robots can control their appearance
Soft robots developed at Harvard University have been given the ability to camouflage themselves or to stand out from their environment.
A team of researchers led by George Whitesides, the Woodford L and Ann A Flowers university professor, took inspiration from starfish and squid to develop silicone-based robots that were unveiled last December in PNAS.
The researchers have now developed a biomimetic system that allows the soft robots to either camouflage themselves against a background or to make colour displays.
Such a ‘dynamic coloration’ system could one day have a host of uses, ranging from helping doctors plan complex surgeries to acting as a visual marker to help search crews following a disaster, said Stephen Morin, a post-doctoral fellow in chemistry and chemical biology and first author of a paper describing the work in Science.
‘When we began working on soft robots, we were inspired by soft organisms, including octopi and squid,’ he said in a statement. ‘One of the fascinating characteristics of these animals is their ability to control their appearance, and that inspired us to take this idea further and explore dynamic colouration.
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