Robots that can grow around trees and rocks like vines could be used to construct buildings or measure pollution in hard-to-reach natural environments.
Vine-like robots are not new, but they are often designed to rely only on a single sense, such as heat or light, to grow upwards, making them less effective than others in certain environments. It doesn't work well.
Emanuela del Dottore The Italian Institute of Technology and colleagues have developed a new version called FiloBot that can use light, shadow, or gravity as a guide. It grows by wrapping a plastic filament into a cylindrical shape, adding a new layer to the body just behind the head that contains the sensor.
“Our robot has a built-in microcontroller that can process multiple stimuli and direct growth at a precise location, namely at the tip, ensuring that the structure of the body is preserved.” she says.
According to Dottore, having such fine control over the direction of the tip means the robot can easily navigate unfamiliar terrain by wrapping around trees and using shadowed areas of leaves as guideposts. This means that it can be moved.
FiloBot grows at approximately 7 millimeters per minute. Although slower than many traditional robots, this gentler progress could mean less disruption to sensitive natural environments, she says.
The researchers don't know exactly what the robot will be used for at this point, but they hope it can be deployed to collect data in areas that are difficult for humans to reach, such as the tops of trees.
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Source: www.newscientist.com
