alt.hn

4/9/2026 at 10:33:41 PM

A soft robot has no problem moving with no motor and no gears

 https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2026/04/08/soft-robot-has-no-problem-moving-no-motor-and-no-gears

by hhs

4/14/2026 at 2:07:38 PM

Liquid crystal elastomers will most likely never be used in humans because, in order to drive the phase transition (mematic mesogens going from isotopic to anisotropic phase) necessary for macro scale work, the LCE has to be heated well beyond 100C. Even in non-thermal contexts, you need kilovolts to influence a doped bulk LCE. I just don't see it happening.

by simojo

4/14/2026 at 8:41:36 AM

Why do these kept getting made? I feel like I see some new soft robot every few months or so. Are they used to infiltrate past grates in a sewer security system and slide under lasers or something what is up with these???

by msuniverse2026

4/14/2026 at 11:59:00 AM

Because it's a really cool concept that a lot of engineers and researchers are excited about, despite the lack of practical applications.

Yes, sometimes that's all it takes.

by ACCount37

4/14/2026 at 2:25:34 PM

and the the Dept of War can imagine creative enough uses for these things to keep funding them (it's how we got computers and the internet too)

by hobo_in_library

4/14/2026 at 12:08:23 PM

We are soft robots (mostly flesh). The skeleton is a scaffold on which our muscles hang. It makes sense to try to replicate what works in biology.

by glitchc

4/14/2026 at 9:05:15 AM

Literally the first line of the article:

> With their ability to shapeshift and manipulate delicate objects, soft robots could work as medical implants, deliver drugs inside the body and help explore dangerous environments.

by degamad

4/14/2026 at 10:57:49 AM

I think to OPs point, we keep hearing that same line and I've never once seen a productionalized version of these

by homeonthemtn

4/14/2026 at 12:26:04 PM

I'm not sure that's a big strike against it yet. Kinda the whole point of engineering in academia is to work on hard things that are far from commercialization.

by DennisP

4/14/2026 at 2:05:43 PM

The fact that a product has not yet been created from a given technology does not mean the technology or the research itself is useless, or will not turn out to be useful in the long term. You can also learn a lot from research or development that does not ultimately work out.

by andrewl

4/14/2026 at 1:07:44 PM

Disaster response is a lie researchers tell themselves when building military hardware. The purpose of such robots would be to e.g. burrow into the collapsed tunnels at Fordow and confirm the uranium is there. (Or, alternatively, burrow into military tunnels to identify targets.)

by JumpCrisscross

4/14/2026 at 12:33:35 PM

You can't mix really strong robots with humans without barriers separating them. That's one reason humanoid robots won't sell. They're dangerous. Real robots in real factories that make real stuff can juggle car engines. And they can tear you limb from limb. So they work behind barriers and intrusion detection systems.

Hence soft robots. They're safe. Also useless.

by Zigurd

4/14/2026 at 1:10:33 PM

Zeta Jones bot

by ge96

4/14/2026 at 9:17:24 AM

There's this YouTube channel called "soiboi soft"[0] that is doing many experiments with air-powered soft robotics and microfluidics.

It's a pretty cool concept and might have interesting albeit niche applications.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/@soiboisoft

by world2vec