McGill University engineers have developed ultra-thin materials that can move, fold, and reshape themselves, ...

Soft robots are made from soft, elastic materials and offer unique opportunities in areas in which conventional rigid robots are not viable; for example, for drug delivery, non-invasive surgical ...

Scientists often look to the natural world for inspiration and ideas when creating synthetic materials. Plants and animals can rapidly respond to changes in the environment. An example is the way a ...

Scientists at Johannes Kepler University (JKU) have created steerable soft robots that are capable of running, swimming, and jumping at high speeds. During testing, the robots achieved a speed of 70 ...

Inexpensive robots of all forms are on the rise. Meka uses compliant actuators called series elastic actuators (SEAs) in nearly all joints of its robotic systems. A spring between motor and load ...

Most animals can quickly transition from walking to jumping to crawling to swimming if needed without reconfiguring or making major adjustments. Most robots cannot. But researchers have now created ...

In this Force Robot, tension cables loop around driveshaft capstans and wrap the “wings” of the arc-shaped linkages. When a motor drives the capstan, the cables transmit torque to the linkage. The ...