This Synthetic Snakeskin Gets Soft Robots Slithering

As robots become more advanced, roboticists are looking more and more towards nature for inspiration. While we’ve come a long way in our relatively short history of robot development, our creations really don’t hold a candle to the animals around us that are the result of billions of years of evolution. Researchers have sought to recreate everything from horses to cockroaches, and now a team at Harvard is tackling snakes.

Their development is currently focused on snakeskin specifically, which is the key to a snake’s ability to move about. Unlike mammalian skin, snakeskin is very highly adapted to their unique style of movement. The scales that cover their skin are rough in one direction for gripping, and smooth in the other for sliding. The skin between the scales can also stretch, so the snake can move forward by stretching, gripping the ground, sliding forward a bit, and then repeating the process.

While snake-like robots are nothing new, the research at Harvard stands out because of the focus on the scales themselves. To fabricate those, the team started with stretchable plastic sheet, and then used a laser cutter to cut grooves that form the scales. The body of the robot snake is inflatable, and is normally smooth when it’s deflated. But, when it’s inflated the scales push out and provide grip, giving the robot the ability to slither forward. It’s still a slow process for now, but that’s really only limited by the speed of the inflation and deflation.