Using the Japanese art of kirigami, scientists have designed a snakelike skin that could give robots a major mobility boost.
The bioinspired snakeskin, described in the journal Science Robotics, could help scientists build more effective robots that could plunge into disaster zones, explore distant planets and even work inside the body.
"Our kirigami-based strategy opens avenues for the design of new class of soft crawlers that can travel across complex environments for search and rescue, exploration and inspection operations, environmental monitoring, and medical procedures," the study authors wrote.
While the Japanese art of kirigami (a variation of origami that involves paper-cutting, not just folding) has been around for centuries, scientists within the last decade have been exploring it for more practical purposes. Researchers have found that that the paper-cutting art can produce stretchy, three-dimensional structures with remarkable physical properties.
Scientists have been experimenting with origami robots and so-called metamaterials for similar reasons, but in this new paper, the researchers argued that kirigami's cutting techniques may offer a better option.
Source :- latimes
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