News
Interviews & Related Articles
- Robots show a softer side. Axios news article: June 2017
- For These Robots, Squishy Is Superior–Science Friday Interview
- Caterpillar Gut Thrusts - the NPR Story
- Facts on File, Today’s Science, The Caterpillar Crawl: Gut Locomotion, by Raymond P. Hill
- Discovery News, Caterpillars move guts first, by Jennifer Viegas
- Scientific American PodCast, Caterpillar's Innards Move Before It Does, by Molly Webster
- Current Biology Video abstract, Visceral-Locomotory Pistoning in Crawling Caterpillars (and commentary by G.P. Sutton, Biomechanics: An Army Marching with Its Stomach
- "As it happens" - Interview with CBC Radio, 2004
Read about GoQBot in Popular Science
Plenty of people are designing robots inspired by nature’s designs, but most of them are rigid machines made of metal, plastic or polyester film. Fleet-footed robots or hoverbots are unable to bend and squish into tight spaces, but squirmy, agile ones like snakebots can’t move very fast.
A new soft-bodied silicone robot aims to change that, squirming into tight spaces with ease and covering great distances quickly, flipping out like a caterpillar under siege.
An Interdisciplinary Incubator
By focusing on how animals move, a group of Tufts researchers are changing how we think about (and may one day build) robots.
"Located a half mile from the Tufts Medford campus at 200 Boston Avenue, the Advanced Technology Laboratory acts as an incubator to bring researchers together and speed up the evolution of ideas. Engineers use biological principles to help design and build structures, which in turn give biologists better ways to explain what they observe. Biomimetics, or mimicking nature, specifically in the form of caterpillars, was just such an interdisciplinary problem..."
Arts, sciences, and engineering faculty members and graduate students discuss ways to control the movements of the soft-body robot. (photo by Melody Ko)