On Building A Fleshy Robotic Caterpillar--and Why | Popular Science

On Building A Fleshy Robotic Caterpillar--and Why | Popular Science: Our GoQBot can inch around like a caterpillar, but it also has a coiled shape-memory-alloy wire running through it that shrinks in length when it’s heated. We warm it up through a tethered control, the wire shortens, the robot curls, and it rolls away quickly. Right now, the wire is our muscle. But the second stage—and we’re working on this now—is developing technology to grow robots out of organic materials. We want to find a way to grow insect muscles inside a robotic device and to fuel the muscles with sugar and fat.