Engineers have developed a new soft, flexible device that makes robots move by expanding and contracting -- just like a human muscle. To demonstrate their new device, called an actuator, the ...

To reliably complete household chores, assemble products and tackle other manual tasks, robots should be able to adapt their ...

When disaster strikes and buildings collapse, every second counts for emergency responders searching for survivors trapped beneath rubble. Traditional tools often fall short in these dangerous, ...

Engineers at MIT have devised an ingenious new way to produce artificial muscles for soft robots that can flex in more than one direction, similar to the complex muscles in the human body. The team ...

Phase-change actuation has been revived for the era of untethered, electrically driven soft robots. Our team at the University of Coimbra have developed a phase transition soft actuator designed to ...

While reconfigurable soft robots are still in their infancy, such a technique could someday enable general-purpose robots that can adapt their shapes to accomplish diverse tasks. "When people think ...

Roboticists have been motivated by a long-standing goal to make robots safer. The new actuator could be used to develop inexpensive, soft, flexible robots which are safer and more practical for ...