Soft robots have long been considered the underdogs of the robotics world. They’re comprised of flexible materials that bend and stretch in ways that seem startlingly similar to living flesh, allowing them to fit into tight areas and handle delicate goods with far more care than a stiff bot could. The only hitch is that without a good method to see where they’re going, these adaptable machines slog along, half-blind and relying on cumbersome add-ons that kind of contradict the idea of their pliable design.
But now, two biomedical engineers from Georgia Tech, Corey Zheng and Shu Jia, have created a flexible eye that completely changes the game. Their invention is a simple disc of water-soaked polymer gel that, when exposed to a beam of light, begins to flex in a manner that is strikingly similar to how our own eyes work. The most important point: there are no wires or motors, only a subtle tiny movement as it changes shape.
- #1 SELLING AI GLASSES - Move effortlessly through life with Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Capture photos and videos, listen to music, make hands-free calls or...
- CAPTURE WHAT YOU SEE AND HEAR HANDS-FREE - Capture exactly what you see and hear with an ultra-wide 12 MP camera and a five-mic system. Livestream it...
- LISTEN WITH OPEN-EAR AUDIO — Listen to music and more with discreet open-ear speakers that deliver rich, quality audio without blocking...
Zheng and Jia dubbed it PHySL, which stands for photo-responsive hydrogel soft lens. Consider a little fleshy pad the size of a quarter, created from a gel primarily composed of water and kept together by long chains of synthetic molecules that can be adjusted by light. When exposed to light on one side, the molecules contract and squeeze the gel, curving the lens in just enough to bring nearby details into sharp relief or pulling back to provide a wider view; do the same on the other side, and the curve reverses and the lens relaxes into a flat state, ready to take in distant sights. They tested it by aiming a basic projector at a multicolored Rubik’s Cube, and the cube’s colors appeared to sharpen and blur as needed, with the lens twisting and bending through it all without splitting.
What really propels this ahead is that it is absolutely devoid of technology. Most changeable cameras now rely on tiny motors or sliding glass pieces that whir and click as you adjust the focus; these systems require batteries and circuits, which add bulk and shatter easily in a soft robot’s body. PHySL does away with all of that. A special microprocessor captures the light and directs it right down to the gel, allowing the entire system to function as a self-contained viewer. If you link it to a basic sensor, you’ll have a camera that runs just on light; energy is only needed to power the light source. In their Science Robotics publication, Zheng describes it as using light energy to power the gel while keeping the entire design modest and dependable, especially in restricted or moist locations.
Dig a little deeper, and the wonder of soft robotics becomes clear in everyday situations. These robots are frequently used in tiny spaces where rigid robots would fail, such as threading them into blood veins during surgery or carefully picking up a new egg in the kitchen. Traditional cameras might get caught or shatter on those harsh surfaces, but our lens is perfectly suited to the robot’s design, ensuring a gentle fit against skin or fragile fruit. In one experiment, scientists teamed it with a specific microfluidic layer that spreads the light equally across the entire region, resulting in a 360-degree view with no blind spots. The end result is a gripping arm that can detect a slippery fruit from a few inches away and alter its grip in mid-reach, or a small probe that checks a patient’s insides without creating a single hole. Jia’s group at Georgia Tech specializes in merging biology and engineering, and this lens appears to be a perfect fit for them, allowing robots to perceive the world in the same way that humans do.
[Source]
