The scaly anteater, also known as the pangolin, is one of the longest-lived creatures on the planet. The oldest fossil find is about 47 million years old. Experts at MPI-IS took this very animal as a model for the tool they were designing, a robot – despite the hard scales with which a pangolin's body is covered, the whole structure remains extremely flexible. This is very important because its main task is therapy using heat.
Research published in the Nature Communications journal describes a prototype device. It consists of two magnetic layers attached to a soft polymer shell covered with a layer of "armor" made of metal elements, which, like the shell armor, are stacked on each other. So although the robot is made of hard parts, it remains soft and flexible.
Scale-covered, pangolin-inspired robot to work inside the body
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
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