Meet the soft robots that can amputate limbs and fuse with other robots

Yale's Faboratory created soft robots that can amputate limbs and fuse into larger units using heated joints with thermoplastic foam.

: Researchers at Yale's Faboratory have designed soft robots capable of self-amputation and fusing with other robots. This innovation uses heated, reversible joints made of a bicontinuous thermoplastic foam and sticky polymer. These robots can alter their form to tackle obstacles, as shown in their videos demonstrating these remarkable abilities.

Researchers at The Faboratory at Yale University have developed soft robots that can replicate some unique animal and insect abilities, such as self-amputation and body fusing. In one video demo, a soft quadruped robot escapes a trap by heating and detaching a leg, showcasing its ability to break free and later reattach the limb.

Another demonstration shows a single crawler robot unable to bridge a gap by itself, but succeeds when three robots fuse using heated joints, crossing the gap as a single unit. This remarkable capability is made possible using bicontinuous thermoplastic foam and a sticky polymer, which creates reversible joints that can be melted and reformed.

These techniques hark back to existing modular robotic methods but stand out due to their flexibility compared to rigid, mechanical connections. The researchers detailed their findings in the paper “Self-Amputating and Interfusing Machines,” suggesting that such technologies might lead to future robots with radical shape-shifting abilities. Whether this development feels more or less eerie than, say, a robot with a skin-covered face is up for debate.

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