27
May
Engineers at Princeton and North Carolina State University have combined ancient paperfolding and modern materials science to create a soft robot that bends and twists through mazes with ease. Soft robots can be challenging to guide because steering equipment often increases the robot's rigidity and cuts its flexibility. The new design overcomes those problems by building the steering system directly into the robot's body, said Tuo Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton. In an article published May 6 in the journal PNAS, the researchers describe how they created the robot out of modular, cylindrical segments. The segments, which can operate…