Inspiration Dissemination

Robots don’t all look like R2-D2. In fact, some robots aren’t hard or made of metal at all. Some are soft and pliable, and they’re the kind that Nick Bira, 3rd year PhD student in the Department of Robotics, is working on. A soft robot can mold into the shape that you need it to. Soft robots are also being used in the medical field. After all, you don’t want some hard, klanky thing poking around inside of you and possibly causing damage. Nick is also embedding iron particles, which are magnetically soft, into silicone rubber, which is a soft elastic material, to make a material that is soft and hyper elastic and when brought close to an ordinary magnet, will stick to it. However, this is only step 1. Nick is interested in creating magnetic fields within the robot rather than it only working if there is a big, hard magnet nearby. One core goal of soft robotics is to have them function on their own without needing some hard object nearby to ‘support’ it. Tune in to learn how he plans to achieve this! Hosted by