South Korean scientists have developed a flexible battery that bends and stretches like a snake, an innovation that could find application in advanced wearable devices and soft robots used in disaster management. Engineers from the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) said the battery's structure draws inspiration from snake scales, which while rigid, can fold together to protect against external impact, and also possess traits that allow them to be highly stretchable and move flexibly. The stretchable device, described in the journal Soft Robotics, enables flexible movement by connecting several small, hard batteries in a scale-like structure. It consists of small, hexagonal battery cells resembling a snake scale which are connected together using a hinge mechanism made of a polymer and copper material to fold and unfold. "This study proposes a novel structure with individual, overlapping units, similar to snake scales that can be used to construct shape-morphing batteries for untethered soft robots," the scientists wrote in the study.

Snakes have got to be some of the most creatively mobile animals ever evolved. They can squeeze into very small holes. Some of them can even fly, a little bit. And all of this despite looking like a lizard that's missing 100 percent of the limbs that it's supposed to have. Roboticists have been working on snake robots for a long time, primarily with a focus on versatile mobility in constrained spaces.