We’ve got robots that can skateboard, robots going to outer space, robots with human-like skin, and now robots that can… inch around like an earthworm. Scientists at Stanford and the Ohio State University banded together to create an origami-inspired tiny robotic crawler that shuffles around just like a tiny worm and looks so absolutely adorable doing so.
But this robot has loftier goals than just looking cute and feeling cute. As explained in a new study published March 30 in the journal Science Advances, the researchers constructed their crawler with flexible cylindrical units and a magnetic field that work to propel the yellow and blue robot forward through the repetitive movement of folding and expanding on itself. The aim is to one day use the man-made earthworm for exploration in confined spaces impossible for humans to navigate—especially for diagnostic medical procedures or to store and release vital medications within the human body.
The researchers borrowed techniques from a particular origami design called the Kresling pattern. It’s something you can actually make on your own: If you take a hollow tube of paper and crush it inward clockwise and again counterclockwise, you’ll end up with two spiral patterns going in opposite directions of each other. And it’s deceptively powerful: When the paper is folded and expanded, it generates torque to move the worm forward.
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The actual folding and expanding of the robot is accomplished through magnets. The researchers created four units of short, origami-folded cylinders interspersed between four magnets (two at the crawler’s ends and two sandwiched in-between). What happens next is similar to the motions of operating an accordion: The robotic crawler is then placed under a magnetic field that moves the magnets back and forth, causing the cylinders to move as well.
In trials, the little robot managed to inch forward in one direction, as well as move in a zig-zag and crawl in a circular path when the direction of the magnetic field was changed. The research team also showed the robots were capable of delivering drugs by having them carry pills that later dissolved in water.
Miniaturizing robotic crawlers is considered challenging—it can be hard to engineer the movements just right—but this proof-of-concept creates a platform for further discovery and innovation in robotics. The researchers hope to build off their findings to create a crawler that can move around with great precision in small and confined spaces when steered by a magnetic field. These robotic crawlers may very well be the next extraterrestrial explorers investigating beneath the surface of new planets. Maybe they’ll show up during your next colonoscopy to take pictures and biopsy suspicious growths. The sky or rather, the space they can fit in, is the limit for these little guys.
