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Soft, autonomous Meshworm robotic earthworm moves using peristalsis

Meshbot Meshbot is inspired by earthworms. MIT News via YouTube Soft, bendy robots could have a wide variety of benefits, from squishing into tight spaces to conduct surveillance, to crawling through a person's body to deliver drugs or take medical images. But it's hard to build entirely soft objects containing soft bodies, soft batteries and soft motors. A new version developed at MIT and Harvard is both soft and tough, inching around like an earthworm yet surviving multiple cruel blows from a rubber mallet. The robot is nicknamed "Meshworm," after the earthworms that inspired its design. Rather than using liquid, air or silicone gears to get around, like other soft robots we've seen, Meshbot uses artificial muscle made from a shape-memory alloy. It looks very much like a squiggling worm, as you can see in the video below. Researchers led by MIT mechanical engineering professor Sangbae Kim took a flexible mesh tube and encircled it in wires out of titanium and nickel, an alloy that contracts and expands wi

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