Caterpillar-Inspired Robot Morphs into Modern Art

The prototype for the first fully soft-bodied robot, developed at Tufts University, will be part of an exhibition on "Design and the Elastic Mind " at New York's Museum of Modern Art from February 24 to May 12, 2008.

The MoMA exhibition showcases some 200 examples of "disruptive innovation" created by scientists, researchers and designers from around the world.

Tufts' squishable "softbot" prototype -- approximately 12 inches long and made of silicon elastomer -- was created as part of ongoing interdisciplinary research at Tufts' School of Arts & Sciences and School of Engineering, led by Professor of Biology Barry Trimmer and Professor of Biomedical Engineering David Kaplan.

The robot design is inspired by the team's findings on both the remarkable neuromechanical system of the Manduca sexta caterpillar and the extraordinary material properties of biopolymers.

"Our work represents the first major effort to design a truly soft-bodied locomoting robot with the workspace capabilities similar to those of a living animal," said Trimmer.

Potential applications for the innovative robots include emergency search and retrieval, medical diagnosis and treatment, manufacturing and aerospace.

Funding for project-related research has been provided by the W.M. Keck Foundation, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

What if you could design a robot that could climb up textured surfaces, crawl along ropes and wires, or burrow into confined spaces? According to Barry Trimmer, a professor of biology at Tufts, you could "make dangerous surgeries safer, repair space stations by accessing hard-to-reach places, and work in dangerous environments like nuclear reactors and landmine fields."

Trimmer and Professor of Biomedical Engineering David Kaplan are teaming up to build a flexible robot that can move like a real animal, such as a caterpillar. According to Trimmer, robots are currently restricted by the use of stiff materials. Although machines often incorporate flexible materials at their joints and can be fast and powerful, no existing technology can match the performance of an animal moving through natural terrain.

As co-directors of the Biomimetic Technologies for Soft-Bodied Robots project, Trimmer and Kaplan are working with a multi-disciplinary team of Tufts researchers, including members from four different engineering departments, to create a truly "soft-bodied" robot—one made of elastic material that can be precisely controlled. The soft-body design will allow the robot to crumple, giving it access to small spaces such as underground landmines and the human body. According to Kaplan, "the robot will be based on the biological materials and adaptive mechanisms found in living cells and tissues. This design will have direct applications in manufacturing, search and rescue, medicine, and space exploration."

The soft-body robot initiative exemplifies the strength of Tufts' interdisciplinary collaborations, "It integrates ideas from biology, biomaterials, electronics, power sources, and biomechanics. All of these fields must work together to develop a fully functional system," he says.

This research is part of the hottest topic in robotics and locomotion studies—looking at biology to understand how creatures in nature move and imitating that movement using soft components. A recent New York Times article featured Trimmer and Kaplan's work on the front page of the Science section. Yet, although many robotics specialists are exploring the subject, there is currently "no other major collaboration of this sort that takes a comprehensive 'molecules-to-robots' approach to the use of soft materials," according to Linda Abriola, dean of the School of Engineering.

Thanks in part to a $730,000 grant from the Keck Foundation, the soft-bodied robot project will soon be housed in Tufts' recently expanded, multi-disciplinary research facility located at 200 Boston Avenue. The 23,000 square-foot space includes, among other spaces, a tissue engineering lab, a biomimetic devices lab, a soft materials characterization lab, and a micro/nano fabrication lab.

Students, in particular, will benefit from the new facility and from the "low barriers" between disciplines that the soft-bodied robot initiative provides. "Our larger goal is to train the next generation of engineers to work across disciplines; that is exactly what we are doing with this project," Kaplan says.

Greg Bettencourt, a senior in mechanical engineering, is one of many students who have been working in collaboration with the Trimmer-Kaplan team on all aspects of the soft-body design. Bettencourt says the SoftBot project "validates all the work I've done in the classroom. It has given me the chance to solve a problem that I can touch; it's a real problem with real challenges."

He also enjoys being part of a large, interdisciplinary team, helping turn theory into reality. "I feel that I am contributing to something big," Bettencourt says. "Robotics has been defined by rigid parts for as long as the field has been around," adding that the SoftBot team's goal to remove locomotive restrictions "could be monumental."

Kaplan contends that while the faculty "sets the scope and direction of this kind of research, students are the catalysts who drive the process. They talk to each other, learn from each other, and bring together the perspectives of different disciplines."

He insists that "without them, nothing would happen." But maybe he's just being a softie.

Soft Bodied Robots Gain National Attention originally ran in Engineering E-news May 2007

Story by Leslie Goldberg, J'84 for Tufts University
Photo of Barry Trimmer with caterpillars by Tom Kates
Caterpillar Photo by John Davis for Tufts University
Photo of David Kaplan by Tufts University Photography