Phys.org has a report on "an untethered miniature origami robot that self-folds, walks, swims, and degrades".
A demo sparking interest at the ICRA 2015 conference in Seattle was all about an origami robot that was worked on by researchers. More specifically, the team members are from the computer science and artificial intelligence lab at MIT and the department of informatics, Technische Universitat in Germany. "An untethered miniature origami robot that self-folds, walks, swims, and degrades" was the name of the paper, co-authored by Shuhei Miyashita, Steven Guitron, Marvin Ludersdorfer, Cynthia R. Sung and Daniela Rus. They focused on an origami robot that does just what the paper's title suggests. A video showing the robot in action showcases each move.
One can watch the robot walking on a trajectory, walking on human skin, delivering a block; swimming (the robot has a boat-shaped body so that it can float on water with roll and pitch stability); carrying a load (0.3 g robot); climbing a slope; and digging through a stack. It also shows how a polystyrene model robot dissolves in acetone.
The video is quite impressive!
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 02 2015, @10:47AM
I was sitting here thinking the same thing, especially after watching the Harvard robot walk (the link is at the bottom of the TFA). I've always been into positive Sci-Fi (as opposed to Sci-Fear) but these things made my skin crawl. I'm sure the positive uses will outweigh the negative, but I'm also sure lots of assholes are thinking of ways to use these in nasty ways.
(Score: 3, Informative) by sudo rm -rf on Tuesday June 02 2015, @11:02AM
It's right there in the TFA!
Atherton said, for example, future designs based on this robot could be [...] sent under the skin.
Run hemocyanin, RUN!
;)
(Score: 2) by TK on Tuesday June 02 2015, @07:26PM
It reminded me of a butterfly. If its possible to make biological robots, the first place to start would naturally be an insect analog.
That should get your spine tingling.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum