This strange little robot amputates its own limbs to escape sticky situations

A new type of shape-shifting robot can amputate its leg to free itself from tricky situations. The robot is the brainchild of a group of engineers at a lab in Connecticut. The robot itself is palm-sized and made of silicone, and it’s one of many new “soft” robots that researchers have been conjuring up as they think of new ways to tackle old problems.

The robot’s ability to amputate its own limbs is thanks to specially formulated joints. These joints are made of a substance that holds them together with a rubbery consistency when at room temperature. However, when heat is applied to the joints, they become more liquid-like, allowing the limb to break off completely.

However, the joints of the shape-shifting robot also work in the opposite way, allowing multiple robots to fuse together. This was demonstrated in another instance by having three different robots fuse together so they could cross a gap that a single robot was unable to cross on its own. This, along with the ability to amputate its own limbs, could lead to some major revolutions in the development of other soft robots.

Of course, it’s hard not to be intrigued by what scientists and engineers are doing in the world of robotics right now, especially after we’ve seen so many robots being made with harder materials like metal and plastic. But in the case of this new soft robot, the hope is that they’ll be able to use biodegradable materials to create the different parts, thus allowing the amputated part to safely degrade and not hurt the environment.

Getting to that point is another step altogether, though. Researchers are hard at work looking for new ways to utilize soft robots. These include robots that can gather vital data for military operations and then self-destruct and robots that are designed to travel through the human body delivering drugs and other needed medication to specific parts of the body.

The new shape-shifting robot is highlighted in a recently published study featured in Advanced Materials. You can see the robot in action in CNN‘s report.