Imagine pulling or compressing a block of soft material—like rubber—equally in all directions. You wouldn’t expect the block to deform much because of the nature of the material. However, in 1948, an applied mathematician named Ronald Rivlin predicted that with the right amount of tensile force, a thick cube of soft material would suddenly deform…
Building a Smart Cardiac Patch
Scientists and doctors in recent decades have made vast leaps in the treatment of cardiac problems — particularly with the development in recent years of so-called “cardiac patches,” swaths of engineered heart tissue that can replace heart muscle damaged during a heart attack. Thanks to the work of Charles Lieber and others, the next leap…
Unstable Responses Harnessed to Build New Soft Actuators
Instability in engineering is generally not a good thing. If you’re building a skyscraper, minor instabilities could bring the whole structure crashing down in a fraction of a second. But what if a quick change in shape is exactly what you want? Soft machines and robots are becoming more and more functional, capable of moving,…
Ultra-Soft Dry Silicone Rubber Developed
Medical implants mimic the softness of human tissue by mixing liquids such oil with long silicone polymers to create a squishy, wet gel. While implants have improved dramatically over the years, there is still a chance of the liquid leaking, which can be painful and sometimes dangerous. Now, led by David A. Weitz, Mallinckrodt Professor…
Robotic Glove Puts Control in Grasp of Hand-Impaired Patients
Having achieved promising results in proof–of–concept prototyping and experimental testing, a soft robotic glove under development by soft wearable robotics expert Conor Walsh, Ph.D., and a team of engineers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) could some day help people suffering…
Crafting Ultrathin Color Coatings in Harvard’s Sub-Basement
In a sub-basement deep below the Laboratory for Integrated Science and Engineering at Harvard University, Mikhail Kats gets dressed. Mesh shoe covers, a face mask, a hair net, a pale gray jumpsuit, knee-high fabric boots, vinyl gloves, safety goggles, and a hood with clasps at the collar – these are not to protect him, Kats…
Soft Robotics Toolkit Features Everything a Robot-Maker Needs
A new resource unveiled today by researchers from several Harvard University labs in collaboration with Trinity College Dublin provides both experienced and aspiring researchers with the intellectual raw materials needed to design, build, and operate robots made from soft, flexible materials. With the advent of low-cost 3D printing, laser cutters, and other advances in manufacturing…
Autonomous Kilobots Arrange Themselves into Vast, Complex Shapes
The first thousand-robot flash mob has assembled at Harvard University. “Form a sea star shape,” directs a computer scientist, sending the command to 1,024 little bots simultaneously via an infrared light. The robots begin to blink at one another and then gradually arrange themselves into a five-pointed star. “Now form the letter K.” View: Photos…
Robots With Lift
They can already stand, walk, wriggle under obstacles, and change colors. Now researchers are adding a new skill to the soft robot arsenal: jumping. See the video here. Using small explosions produced by a mix of methane and oxygen, researchers at Harvard have designed a soft robot that can leap as much as a foot…