Tufts science professors Barry Trimmer and David Kaplan never expected their work to be featured in an art museum.
But their innovative technology, the world's first soft-bodied robot, is currently on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) until May 12 in an exhibition called "Design and the Elastic Mind."
The robot, or SoftBot, resembles a white, silicone caterpillar and is a little less than a foot long. Its fundamental difference in design from traditional, hard-bodied robots makes it noteworthy.
In the past, robots have achieved the appearance of being soft by covering a metallic, jointed device with a pliable shell. With the SoftBot, the silicone comprises the robotic device through the use of electrical impulses and imbedded, flexible springs of about one tenth of a millimeter in diameter.
The SoftBot has been heralded as a groundbreaking advance in the world of science and technology, so hosting it in an art museum might seem odd at first. "I think what captured the museum's attention is the idea that these new technologies change the way we think about the world around us, and there's an artistic aspect to that," said Trimmer, a professor of biology.
Paola Antonelli, the exhibition's curator at the MoMA, explains on the museum's Web site that the "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibit is meant to focus on designers' abilities "to grasp momentous changes in technology, science and social mores and to convert them into objects and systems that people can understand and use."
She refers to the exhibition's featured designs and devices as examples of "disruptive innovation" whose designers "manifest our visions and aspirations for the future, even those we do not yet know we have."
Trimmer and Kaplan, a professor of biomedical engineering, said that they hope the SoftBot will help spark revolutions in medicine, the military and even outer-space exploration.
Kaplan believes that once the technology is made small enough, soft-bodied robots will replace the tiny cameras that medical patients swallow to help diagnose diseases.
Similarly, Trimmer described how soft robotics could be used to make prosthetic limbs. SoftBot limbs would be more flexible and lifelike than the metal prosthetics that are commonly used nowadays. SoftBots could also be used in space to assess and potentially fix damages to highly delicate solar panels and satellites.
Trimmer and Kaplan are continuing their work with SoftBots.
"We are several years away from use in the military or human body, but we're going to have working prototypes walking around within twelve months," Trimmer said.
The SoftBot on display at the MoMA is currently the only working prototype, but the professors are planning improvements on the model to make it more "natural."
"What we hope to do is replace all the synthetic materials, the springs and silicone, with biological materials," Trimmer said. "So now we can make a robot that's soft, highly versatile, as well as biocompatible and biodegradable. We want it completely made of natural soft materials."
The robot would then be safe for insertion into the human body, Trimmer said.
"For 50 years, if you look at the old sci-fi films, people thought about robots in a very different way," Kaplan said, explaining that the new robotic design is based in biology instead of mechanics. "If you look throughout nature, you find and get inspired by different things. You'll look at them one way for decades and then you'll get this spark and see how natural things can be used differently."
Specifically, the design of this "disruptive innovation" is based on the biology of the tobacco hornworm caterpillar, which Trimmer has been studying for twenty years.
"I tend to look at nature as a gold mine for novel material ideas because nature has had to solve every kind of material problem, but has had eons," Kaplan said. "So why not start there with good ideas and then add to that with what we know how to do technologically."
