If a soft-bodied robot uses rigid actuators to move its body, then it isn't really soft now, is it? An experimental new caterpillar-inspired bot gets around that conundrum by using soft, collapsible ...

Each unit has multiple points to which another unit can attach itself: 18 of them, to be precise, which means that just two units can be combined in 435 ways. The number of possible configurations ...

The robot is made of segments that can fold into a flat disk and extend into a cylinder. Partial folds bend the robot and allow for motion and steering. Engineers at Princeton and North Carolina State ...

Researchers at Dartmouth College have created modular robots that can assemble into structures and move through real-world terrain. Built from cube-shaped blocks, the robots combine rigid rods with ...

The next generation of soft robots might be folding and sliding as effortlessly as living tissue, say a team of engineers who have created “magnetic muscles” with 3D printing. Filling elastic, ...

Modular robots built by Dartmouth researchers are finding their feet outdoors. Engineered to assemble into structures that best suit the task at hand, the robots are pieced together from cube-shaped ...

A new 3-D printing technique can create paper-thin "magnetic muscles," which can be applied to origami structures to make them move. By infusing rubber-like elastomers with materials called ...