Artificial 'octopus skin' enables robots to bend, change colour

Washington

IMAGINE a wearable smartphone that could bend and stretch with your body, all while displaying a glittering array of colours. That's the eventual goal of this new octopus-inspired robotic "skin" from researchers at Cornell. It can stretch to six times its original size while still emitting light. Described in a study published on Thursday in Science, this super-stretchy skin is designed to give soft robots the ability to change colour and display information based on input from their sensors.

Soft robots have been gaining popularity among engineers over the past few years. They're exactly what they sound like: robots made from squishy materials. Made without the stiff mechanical components of a traditional robot, they're much better at bending and squeezing into tight spaces. They're also less likely to hurt the animals, people and objects they interact with, because they lack hard edges. Because of this, engineers have suggested that soft robots could be used to crawl into collapsed buildings in search-and-rescue missions, or even be used as a safer alternative to current robotic surgical tools.