Shape-changing, free-roaming soft robot created

"A significant limitation of most soft robots is that they have to be attached to a bulky air compressor or plugged into a wall, which prevents them from moving," said Nathan Usevitch, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Stanford. "So, we wondered: What if we kept the same amount of air within the robot all the time?" From that starting point, the researchers ended up with a human-scale soft robot that can change its shape, allowing it to grab and handle objects and roll in controllable directions. Their invention is described in a paper published March 18 in Science Robotics. "The casual description of this robot that I give to people is Baymax from the movie Big Hero 6 mixed with Transformers. In other words, a soft, human-safe robot mixed with robots that can dramatically change their shape," said Usevitch.