(麻豆淫院Org.com) -- What do you think of when you hear the word 鈥渞obot鈥�? If you鈥檙e like most folks, you probably imagine something like Gort from 鈥淭he Day the Earth Stood Still鈥� 鈥� a lumbering metal machine designed to resemble a human.

George M. Whitesides, on the other hand, thinks of squid.

Whitesides, the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor, and his research team have developed an array of 鈥渟oft鈥� robots based on natural forms, including squid and starfish. Whitesides envisions using the pneumatically powered robots to aid disaster recovery efforts by squeezing into the rubble left by an earthquake to locate survivors, or as a way to free up a surgeon鈥檚 hands in the operating room. The work is described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) this month.

鈥淚f you look around, most robots are things that either look like humans, or like parts of humans,鈥� Whitesides said. 鈥淭he robots that work on automobile assembly lines are just the upper half of a human being that鈥檚 bolted to the ground.

鈥淭here are all kinds of animals, however, that do things in very different ways, and those creatures have not been looked at carefully because we have gotten fixed on a particular point of view,鈥� Whitesides continued. 鈥淭he key to this research is that we asked the question, 鈥榃hy can鈥檛 we do something that鈥檚 squidlike?鈥欌€�

Inspired by natural forms, Whitesides鈥� team went to work, eventually building starfish- and squidlike robots capable of surprisingly delicate operations such as picking up a raw egg without breaking the shell.

Such 鈥済rippers,鈥� however, were only the start. Other designs have ranged from a four-legged platform to one that resembles the animated character Gumby. Using multiple air cylinders that open and close in sequence, researchers are able to make such designs walk or crawl through spaces as small as three quarters of an inch.

Such flexibility would be critical in search and rescue operations, one of the major areas where Whitesides sees the robots being used. A variety of sensors, from cameras to chemical detectors, could be mounted on a robot and used to pinpoint the locations of survivors, survey the damage from a disaster, or take chemical and radiation readings, all without endangering the lives of rescue workers.

鈥淚f there is a situation where buildings have collapsed and the rubble is unstable, or there is the possibility that an earthquake aftershock could cause more damage, you don鈥檛 want to be in there,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut there may be people in there, so you can send in one of these robots.

鈥淭racked robots are difficult, because they don鈥檛 climb things well, they鈥檙e heavy, and they tend to be unstable,鈥� he added. 鈥淥ur design, by comparison, is very low to the ground, so they鈥檙e very stable and they can clamber over and under all kinds of obstacles.鈥�

Whitesides also envisions a second area where the robots could fill an immediate need 鈥� the operating room, where they could act as a second pair of hands for surgeons, holding instruments in place, holding incisions open, and protecting delicate tissue from damage.

鈥淲hat they can do is provide soft helpers,鈥� Whitesides said. 鈥淚f you have to move tissue, particularly damaged tissue, out of the way, or if you have to hold a little flap of something delicate while you鈥檙e suturing it, it may well be that the gentle grip these robots provide is a better way of doing it.鈥�

Unlike their mechanical counterparts, however, the process of constructing a soft robot is relatively easy and surprisingly inexpensive.

Using molds created by a 3-D printer, researchers cast the robot鈥檚 two halves in one of several types of silicone, depending on how flexible they want it to be. Those two halves are then sandwiched around a thin layer of less-flexible plastic. When bladders inside the sandwiched layers are inflated, the robot鈥檚 limbs flex, allowing it to pick up items or walk.

That simplicity of design and construction was always intended, Whitesides said.

鈥淲e can make the mold, cast the polymer, and put these things together in a couple hours,鈥� he said. 鈥淓ventually, I think we鈥檒l have designs that make these so cheap that you can just stack them up and throw them away after a single use.鈥�

Going forward, Whitesides said, researchers hope to make the robots of tougher materials that can withstand long use in the field. Other efforts will be concentrated on making the robots both larger and smaller, and on developing control systems that could allow the robots to work autonomously.

鈥淥ur concern right now is to see what kind of motion we can get, what are the materials that are needed to make these, and how easy is it to make them 鈥� the sort of basic, exploratory questions,鈥� Whitesides said.