It's called FiloBot and it's the robot capable of stretching and moving like a climbing plant, thanks to the 3D printing technique directly integrated into its cylindrical body.
It is the latest addition to the generation of plant robots, born thanks to the research of Barbara Mazzolai's group from the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa.
Described in the journal Science Robotics, FiloBot was also developed by the same research group and created as part of the European GrowBot project, coordinated by Mazzolai.
Possible applications include environmental monitoring, for example with the measurement of pollution in dangerous areas and the exploration of difficult to reach and unknown natural environments, in which it is difficult to predict an exact path.
Plants "continuously move in a targeted, effective and efficient way, but on a time scale not easily perceivable by humans" comment Mazzolai, who is associate director for Robotics at IIT and head of the bio-inspired soft robotics laboratory, and Emanuela Del Doctor, first author of the study.
"To move from one point to another, plants must grow and continuously adapt their bodies to external environmental conditions", continue the two researchers.
The idea for the climbing robot was born by observing plants, which move thanks to cell division and the elongation at the ends of shoots and roots.
FiloBot also grows from one of the ends, thanks to a thermoplastic thread that rotates around the axis of its body, adapting its shape to the environment based on the inputs it receives from its sensors.
Thanks to the latter, the robot perceives the force of gravity and analyzes the characteristics of light, thus determining the direction in which to grow: for this reason FiloBot never develops in the same way, but each time it takes on a different configuration depending on the stimuli that it receives from the environment.
This is also a demonstration of the great ability to adapt that this robot has, which can therefore move in different environments, minimizing construction costs due to reduced energy and material consumption
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