3D-printed robots designed to work together on big tasks
(Photo: Nitin Sanket, Tufts University).
February 7, 2025 – Imagine tiny robots, each about the size of a palm, mapping areas contaminated with toxic materials, searching for survivors in disaster zones, or identifying areas where wildfires are spreading rapidly. Or imagine the robots being used to clear mines from battlefields, conducting search and rescue missions after earthquakes, or being deployed on farms to control pests and monitor soil conditions. That’s the idea that Markus Nemitz, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Tufts University, has been working on for years. It may seem like science fiction, but it’s starting to take shape in the form of tiny, resilient robots with soft joints made using 3D printers. Their development is described in a new paper in Nature Communications under the title ‘’A framework for soft mechanism driven robots’.
