Soft robots controlled by light and magnetic field

The technique from North Carolina State University and Elon University, North Carolina, allows the team to lock soft robots into position for any given time and later reconfigure them into new shapes.

“We’re particularly excited about the reconfigurability,” said Joe Tracy, a professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and corresponding author of a paper on the work. “By engineering the properties of the material, we can control the soft robot’s movement remotely; we can get it to hold a given shape; we can then return the robot to its original shape or further modify its movement; and we can do this repeatedly. All of those things are valuable, in terms of this technology’s utility.”

According to NC State, the team used soft robots made of a polymer embedded with magnetic iron microparticles. Under normal conditions, the material holds its shape but light from an LED makes the polymer pliable. Once pliable, researchers demonstrated that they could control the shape of the robot remotely by applying a magnetic field. After forming the desired shape, researchers could remove the LED light, allowing the robot to resume its original stiffness, essentially locking the shape in place.