New 3D-printed robots walk right off the production line

Robotics might be the future, although all of its manifestations might not all be the mechanical bipeds we tend to envision when the field comes up in conversation.

In fact, a number of groups in the discipline assert that the opposite might be the case: robots completely made of flexible, organic or even biomimetic materials.

Their strategically geometric designs that are compelled to move by internal fluidics, which can be 'implanted' into the robots even before they come off the production line in order to make sure they "walk" in the way their engineers intended.

The "soft robots", as they are often called, can be made using 3D printers due to their design and composition - in fact, they can start moving from the second these processes are completed.

The ability to make soft robots that do such a thing is not actually new, as demonstrated by the work of other groups such as Zhai et al., published in Advanced Systems Intelligence in 2023.

However, the team led by Maks Gepner of the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering asserts that its version is the most cost-effective to date, as it is made using the open-source Flex platform of 3D printing that might require an outlay of as little as $500.

The Flex printer is also touted as the most “democratized” form of soft robot production, as it fits on a desk-sized surface and is apparently the most user-friendly platform of its type.

Gepner and his colleagues Jonah Mack and Adam A. Stokes also intend to make the robots open-source with their own Github repository and CAD files.

The soft robots such as those produced by the new process are touted to be versatile, durable and generally beneficial in various areas of industry, health technology and the world in general.