Video of the week: Harvard robots built with plastic straws

Known as Arthrobots, they were developed by noted Harvard Professor George Whiteside – a pioneer in soft robotics – and Alex Nemiroski, a former postdoctoral fellow in Whitesides’ Harvard lab. The fundamental mechanism at play is a simple joint, made by cutting a notch in a plastic straw. Limb movement is controlled by inflating short lengths of tubing in the straw, with a rubber tendon causing the joint to retract when the tubing deflates.

“This all started with an observation that George made, that polypropylene tubes have an excellent strength-to-weight ratio,” said Nemiroski. “That opened the door to creating something that has more structural support than purely soft robots have.”

“That was the building block, and then we took inspiration from arthropods to figure out how to make a joint and how to use the tubes as an exoskeleton. From there it was a question of how far can your imagination go?”