{"id":209911,"date":"2025-03-28T01:20:02","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T06:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/wheel-less-helical-ring-based-soft-robot-can-move-reliably-in-all-directions"},"modified":"2025-03-28T01:20:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T06:20:02","slug":"wheel-less-helical-ring-based-soft-robot-can-move-reliably-in-all-directions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/wheel-less-helical-ring-based-soft-robot-can-move-reliably-in-all-directions","title":{"rendered":"Wheel-less helical ring-based soft robot can move reliably in all directions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iDLADT_S6Ks?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Over the past decades, roboticists have introduced a wide range of systems that can move in various complex environments, including different terrains, on the ground, in the air, and even in water. To safely navigate real-world dynamic environments without colliding with humans or nearby objects, most robots rely on sensors and cameras.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at Tsinghua University have recently developed WHERE-Bot, a new wheel-less, everting <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/soft+robot\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">soft robot<\/a> (i.e., a flexible robot that moves by turning its body structure inside out) that safely moves in unstructured environments without using sensors to detect obstacles. This robot, introduced in a paper <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2503.07245\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> on the <i>arXiv<\/i> preprint server and set to be presented at the 8th IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (<a href=\"https:\/\/robosoft2025.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">RoboSoft<\/a>) in April, leverages its unique helical ring-based structure to move in all directions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne day, while playing with a Slinky toy during a lab meeting,\u201d Shuguang Li, senior author of the paper, told Tech Xplore. \u201cSuddenly, a new idea struck us: what if we connected the head and tail of the spring toy? By joining its two ends, the spring could be endlessly turned inside-out\u2014a motion we now call \u2018everting\u2019\u2014presenting a fascinating color flow. This sparked our curiosity about how such a helical ring\u2014perhaps with some structure modifications\u2014would behave in various environments: on the ground, along a pipe, underwater, on sand, and even in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past decades, roboticists have introduced a wide range of systems that can move in various complex environments, including different terrains, on the ground, in the air, and even in water. To safely navigate real-world dynamic environments without colliding with humans or nearby objects, most robots rely on sensors and cameras. Researchers at Tsinghua [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}