Robots May Be More Like Caterpillars Than R2-D2

Feb. 1, 2007 — -- Imagine a robot so small and so flexible and so clever that it could be injected into your bloodstream to scour your vessels and search for problems.

Scientists and engineers at Tufts University say they are well on the road to creating a wide range of devices -- called "soft-bodied robots" -- that can do just that, as well as many other chores. And guess where they got their inspiration? From one of the most amazing creatures on the planet: the caterpillar.

"The caterpillar doesn't have any bones, it doesn't have any joints, and yet it can move in very flexible, complex ways," says Barry Trimmer, a neurobiologist at Tufts. "But its brain isn't very complicated. There aren't many neurons in there."

Trimmer and David Kaplan, professor of biomedical engineering, are co-directors of a multidisciplinary project at Tufts, funded chiefly by the W.M. Keck Foundation. The purpose of the project is to create robots that are radically different from the awkward mechanical robots seen today.

"You don't see robots that are like animals that can collapse down and are soft and pliable," Trimmer says. "There are things that animals can do that robots can't, and we'd like to exploit that."

The researchers already have a few robots "crawling around the floor" of their lab, but they are at least 18 months away from introducing any of them to the public. First, they want a soft-bodied robot that can move horizontally and climb up a twig. That in itself would be a remarkable achievement, but it would only be the beginning.

Some day, they say, we should see robots of all sizes, from tiny to gargantuan, that can carry out tasks that are too risky for humans. They will be so cheap to build that they will be expendable, and they will play key roles in everything from medicine to space exploration. And it's all because of the talents of the common caterpillar.

Ambitious goals, to be sure, and it sounds like science fiction, but the members of the Tufts team are deadly serious.

"This started to come together as people in engineering and biology and biomedical engineering started talking to one another," says Trimmer. That's a significant accomplishment because engineers and scientists don't always speak the same language.