A nature-inspired robot using water and combustible powder can launch itself from water like a flying fish. The device, which can travel 26 metres through the air after take-off, could potentially be used to collect water samples in hazardous environments, such as floods. Researchers at Imperial College London created the system, which weighs just 160 grams and can'jump' multiple times after refilling its water tank. Furthermore, while similar robots often require calm conditions to leap from the water, the team's invention generates a force 25 times the robot's weight, giving it a greater chance of overcoming choppy waves. The water and the calcium-carbide powder combine in a reaction chamber, producing a burnable acetylene gas.

Chemistry is a sort of applied physics, with the behavior of electrons and their orbitals dictating a set of rules for which reactions can take place and what products will remain stable. At a very rough level, the basics of these rules are simple enough that experienced chemists can keep them all in their brain and intuit how to fit together pieces in a way that ultimately produces the starting material they want. Unfortunately, there are some parts of the chemical landscape that we don't have much experience with, and strange things sometimes happen when intuition meets a reaction flask. This is why some critical drugs still have to be purified from biological sources. It's possible to get more precise than intuition, but that generally requires full quantum-level simulations run on a cluster, and even these don't always capture some of the quirks that come about because of things like choice of solvents and reaction temperatures or the presence of minor contaminants. But improvements in AI have led to a number of impressive demonstrations of its use in chemistry.

While the current generation of industrial robots is primarily made of metal, the research community has been getting interested in the potential for soft-bodied robots. These have a number of advantages, such as being easy to customize via 3D printing and providing a flexibility that lets them squeeze through tight spaces. Many of the research demonstrations created so far, however, have required some compromises. For some iterations, this has meant the control hardware and power sources have been kept separate, connected to the robot via a tether. For other attempts, this has meant the final product is a mixture of hard and soft pieces.