Science / AAAS

The summer of squishy bots continues. First it was the artificial jellyfish powered by a rat's heart cells, then the indestructible robotic earthworm fabricated by MIT. Now, the chameleon robot.

This latest product from the soft robotics program at Harvard University takes an earlier model known as the "squid bot" and adds the camouflaging capabilities of a sea creature in the wild. With help from researchers and a good bit of dye, the translucent squid bot can take on a new color that lets it either blend in with or stand out from its surroundings. In its current state, the bot could aid in surgical simulations or understanding the science behind camouflage.

"We began with the fundamental science question of, 'Can we make a soft-bodied robot in a very primitive way?' " says George Whitesides of Harvard, co-author of the new study in Science this week.

Instead of creating a soft robot that changed color on its own, Whitesides and his team decided to start with something a little simpler. The researchers themselves are responsible for pumping the dye into the wire-tethered robot. The bot can't tell what colors surround it and adjust accordingly; that's up to the scientist looking after it. "The animal [squid robot] has offloaded its brain into us," Whitesides says.

The bot itself has a pretty basic design. "It's a thin piece of silicone rubber, and inside that we've embedded channels," study co-author Stephen Morin says. The channels are air and fluid canals that the researchers fill with dye. In all, it takes 30 seconds for the robot to fill with color and another 30 seconds for it to drain. But the canals are so small that even from a short distance away, the robot appears to blend in seamlessly with its environment.

With this project, the team set out to understand which colors and patterns it would take to get the robot to effectively disappear against various backgrounds. But that's only the first step toward developing an autonomous, wireless bot that could automatically blend in with its surroundings—a far-off goal for the scientists.

The robot's color-changing ability doesn't have much in common with its biological inspiration's, according to Douglas Weibel, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who is unaffiliated with the paper. The squid in the wild doesn't use biochemical processes like fluid and air manipulation to create its color-changing effect. Rather, the animal uses an optical illusion to reflect light and blend in to whatever background it finds itself within. "It's structural color, and I think that's pretty hard to do," Weibel says. "People know how to make iridescent structures, but I don't know any really good examples of structured color."

But, the researchers say, their color-changing method could lead to some cool uses for new soft bots. "One of the applications that we're interested in for this device is surgical simulation, planning, and training," Morin says. For instance, instead of having doctors-in-training practice procedures on organic tissue (as they do now), squid bot technology might be used to fabricate disposable but realistic-feeling (and properly colored) practice organs.

The robot can camouflage itself not only in visible light but also in infrared, which could lead to new ways of helping us see in the dark. "It could be an extension of our spectral bandwidth," Whitesides says. It might be possible to hide an object in the visible spectrum and illuminate it in infrared, helping to light a way through a pitch-black room, for example.

Soft robots generally have a lot more flexibility in design and function than their usually hard, immovable counterparts, which makes them appealing to researchers looking toward the future of robotics. But for now, Weibel sees Morin and Whitesides's work as only the first step toward making something that could eventually mimic biology. "It might look clunky right now," he says, "but I imagine it's going to be something important. I'm excited to see what happens with this technology."

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