Caterpillar-inspired soft crawling robot

below is from "Shipman, M. and Zhu, Y. (2023, March 22). Robot Caterpillar Demonstrates New Approach to Locomotion for Soft Robotics. NC State University. Retrieved from https://news.ncsu.edu/2023/03/soft-robot-caterpillar/"
 

"Researchers at North Carolina State University have demonstrated a caterpillar-like soft robot that can move forward, backward and dip under narrow spaces. The caterpillar-bot’s movement is driven by a novel pattern of silver nanowires that use heat to control the way the robot bends, allowing users to steer the robot in either direction.

“A caterpillar’s movement is controlled by local curvature of its body – its body curves differently when it pulls itself forward than it does when it pushes itself backward,” says Yong Zhu, corresponding author of a paper on the work and the Andrew A. Adams Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at NC State. “We’ve drawn inspiration from the caterpillar’s biomechanics to mimic that local curvature, and use nanowire heaters to control similar curvature and movement in the caterpillar-bot.

“Engineering soft robots that can move in two different directions is a significant challenge in soft robotics,” Zhu says. “The embedded nanowire heaters allow us to control the movement of the robot in two ways. We can control which sections of the robot bend by controlling the pattern of heating in the soft robot. And we can control the extent to which those sections bend by controlling the amount of heat being applied.”"