Skip Nav Destination
Close Modal
Update search
NARROW
Format
Journal
TocHeadingTitle
Date
Availability
1-1 of 1
Nomi Hadar
Close
Follow your search
Access your saved searches in your account
Would you like to receive an alert when new items match your search?
Sort by
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Artificial Life (2016) 22 (1): 1–22.
Published: 01 February 2016
FIGURES
| View All (21)
Abstract
View article
PDF
New types of robots inspired by biological principles of assembly, locomotion, and behavior have been recently described. In this work we explored the concept of robots that are based on more fundamental physical phenomena, such as fluid dynamics, and their potential capabilities. We report a robot made entirely of non-Newtonian fluid, driven by shear strains created by spatial patterns of audio waves. We demonstrate various robotic primitives such as locomotion and transport of metallic loads—up to 6-fold heavier than the robot itself—between points on a surface, splitting and merging, shapeshifting, percolation through gratings, and counting to 3. We also utilized interactions between multiple robots carrying chemical loads to drive a bulk chemical synthesis reaction. Free of constraints such as skin or obligatory structural integrity, fluid robots represent a radically different design that could adapt more easily to unfamiliar, hostile, or chaotic environments and carry out tasks that neither living organisms nor conventional machines are capable of.