A Robot That Grows

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At first glance, robots would appear to have exactly nothing in common with sweet peas or other climbing vines. Yet thanks to some innovative scientists, they now share at least one trait: the ability to extend their reach.Inspired by the growing action of plants and other living things, researchers at UC Santa Barbara and Stanford University have developed a tubular robot that — much like a sweet pea — navigates its environment by extending its tip and controlling its growing direction based on what it senses externally. Such a machine lends itself well to a variety of purposes in constrained environments, from clearing arterial blockages to tunneling through rubble for search and rescue operations.
“When you think about robots today, the majority of them are in the world of factories,” said UCSB mechanical engineer Elliot Hawkes. “But there’s a big push right now to see if we can create robots that could actually live and help out in the human world.” Robots, known for their precision and consistent, repeatable action in highly controlled spaces, are now being explored for their potential to work under variable circumstances. For instance, said Hawkes, these so-called “soft” robots may adapt their actions to the presence of obstacles (including humans) or change shape to interact in a variety of spaces. Research on this project, titled “A soft robot that navigates its environment through growth,” appears in the journal Science Robotics.
While much research has been done on robot locomotion, from rolling to flying and even animal-inspired walking, a robot that elongates and extends is a fairly new challenge for mechanical engineers. The design of this particular soft robot was inspired by nature, specifically by trailing vines and fungal hyphae, and even by nerve cells, all of which grow from their tips.
“In the cases where nature uses this type of movement to go somewhere, it’ ...

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