Soft Robotic Structures Fold Themselves Up in Hot Water

Over the last few years there's been an increased focus on robots that can build themselves. This is especially pertinent when you're dealing with robots that are fiddly to make, which includes (at the moment) most robots that are soft and compliant. It seems like soft robots would be quite happy to be 3D printed, but in practice, they need to be made out of highly deformable materials that only behave themselves if you take the trouble to mold them instead, which is tedious any annoying. At ICRA on Tuesday, Cynthia Sung, who was previously with Daniela Rus's group at MIT and is now a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, presented a new approach for making compliant, controllable robotic structures. Called additive self-folding, this origami-inspired technique involves creating 3D shapes made out of a long strip of self-folding 2D material, and all you have to do is add some hot water.