What is it about?
This paper describes a material that can crawl (like a caterpillar) inside water in response to electric fields. The electric fields create stresses in the material (which is a hydrogel - a water swollen polymer) to induce actuation. The materials are completely soft and the motion is controlled externally with electric fields. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L71hCFdYnwo
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Photo by Sander Mathlener on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Such "soft robots" are of interest for carrying out tasks (e.g. sensing, exploration) in environments where conventional rigid robots fail.
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Electro-actuated hydrogel walkers with dual responsive legs, Soft Matter, January 2014, Royal Society of Chemistry,
DOI: 10.1039/c3sm51921j.
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