Japanese Researcher Makes Soft Deformable Amoeboid Robot Inspired by Slime Mold

Posted on March 13, 2012

This yellow blob-like robot was inspired by Physarum polycephalum, a type of slime mold. Technology Review reports that Takuya Umedachi of Hiroshima University has been developing his amoeboid robot for the past five years. The robot was made with a balloon protoplasm and an outer skin made up of real-time tunable springs. The slime bot starts moving around the 1 minute mark.

This second clip is an animation that shows how this type of robot could squeeze through tight spaces. Take a look:

A paper on the slime mold inspired bot was published here in Advanced Robotics.

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