Engineers at the Biomimetic Devices Laboratory (BDL) at Tufts University (Medford, MA) are developing biologically-based technologies that use soft materials to incorporate them into a new type of highly flexible robot. These machines could have applications in biomedical diagnosis and surgery, emergency rescue, exploration, and for monitoring or repairing space vehicles. Devices based on these technologies may improve the versatility and performance of conventional hard-bodied robots.

Prototypes look and move much like caterpillars. The BDL robots have a skin made of a silicone rubber, and wriggle forward via springs. As a current is passed through a spring, it contracts, bending the robot.

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Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a new class of gas sensors using a chemical process that converts the silica (silicon dioxide) found in the shells of diatoms into the semiconductor material silicon.

Silicon is normally produced from silica at temperatures well above the silicon melting point (1,414 degrees Celsius), so that solid silicon replicas cannot be directly produced from silica structures with such conventional processing. The researchers used a reaction based on magnesium gas that converted the silica into a composite containing silicon (Si) and magnesium oxide (MgO). The conversion took place at only 650 degrees Celsius, which allowed preservation of the complex channels and hollow cylindrical shape of the diatom.

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