Professor of Biology Barry Trimmer highlighted the groundbreaking capabilities of his newly developed soft-bodied robot during the Dean's Faculty Forum in the Coolidge Room in Ballou Hall on Monday evening, suggesting that the invention could revolutionize fields ranging from medicine to military reconnaissance.
Trimmer's "SoftBot" has received recognition for its amorphous quality and its ability to fit into confined, complex spaces.The robot is also capable of carrying cargo in its central cavity, Trimmer said. It can be made in a large range of sizes, from the length of bullets to multiple meters.
Trimmer, the Henry Bromfield Pearson professor of natural sciences, explained how these characteristics make the machine a valuable tool for surgeries and biomedical diagnoses. "A soft, flexible robot could be much less damaging and less painful [than the current technology] for exploring parts of the body," he said.
Furthermore, "our robots are silent and they don't use any power to grip [other things]; they use passive Velcro," Trimmer said, citing their possible use as surveillance machines.
In dangerous reconnaissance missions such as exploring minefields, the robots will be cheap enough to send out without having to retrieve them, he said.
Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Robert Sternberg delivered the introductory remarks before Trimmer took the podium.
"He will discuss ... novel technologies that might change how we think about building and using machines," Sternberg said.
Trimmer, who founded the Tufts Biominetic Devices laboratory, began his speech with a brief history of robots, a topic he said was ironically out of his league.
"The work that I'm going to describe today is really something that I have no business doing," Trimmer said. "I'm a biologist, I'm not an engineer, and I don't presume to be telling engineers how to do their business."
After discussing common perceptions of robots as humanoid, he provided an overview of landmark robots developed by various groups and people around the world.
"In many ways, we're still at the point of dealing with a fixed task robot," he said. "These robots don't behave like animals; they are not adaptable, robust and versatile," he said, citing their composition of stiff materials as a factor that makes them difficult to control. Trimmer's SoftBot provides an alternative to this type of machine, he said.
Trimmer also described the Biosynthetic Robots Initiative, a prospective program that he hopes to lead at Tufts.
"We want to go one step further," Trimmer said, describing the initiative as "an extensive new research-education program in the biosynthesis and engineering of organic robots."
Trimmer said that the program, if successfully developed, will use live cells to create robots that can grow organically. This will provide great educational opportunities by cutting across a wide range of academic areas. "We think it's a great research initiative because it explores problems that people haven't really tried to solve," he said.
According to Trimmer, if his technique is successful in "growing" soft-bodied robots, they will be very cheap and easy to manufacture.
In suggesting the robot's possible functions, Trimmer also referred to the snake-like robots used after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. These machines were unsuccessful in searching for the bodies of survivors. "The task was too difficult," he said.
He said he believes his robots will be more successful in these kinds of search and rescue situations because they are extremely soft and malleable and cannot get stuck in tight spaces.
"I'm going to try to convince you that I'm not nuts for working on caterpillars for the last 20 years of my life," Trimmer said, and concluded by thanking his lab staff and colleagues.
