Recent years have seen big advances in Robotics. Soft Robotics, a Robotics sub-field dealing with fabricating robots using materials that imitate human tissues, just got a huge fillip. Researchers at Columbia Engineering managed to develop a synthetic tissue that closely imitates human muscles. The 3D-printed tissue achieves this flexibility from its constituents, silicone rubber and ethanol-dispensing micro-bubbles. Amazingly, the synthetic tissue can carry 1000 times more than its weight.
A number of companies have done a lot of work in making robots intelligent. While robots’ minds have made great progress, their bodies, which are the focus area for Soft Robotics, unfortunately, are still primitive, consisting mostly of metals and alloys.
Lead scientist, Hod Lipson is incredibly enthusiastic about this new breakthrough. He asserts that this new synthetic tissue will go a long way in manufacturing life-like robots.