{"id":218011,"date":"2025-07-16T01:29:44","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T06:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/wriggling-robot-worms-team-up-to-crawl-up-walls-and-cross-obstacles"},"modified":"2025-07-16T01:29:44","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T06:29:44","slug":"wriggling-robot-worms-team-up-to-crawl-up-walls-and-cross-obstacles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/wriggling-robot-worms-team-up-to-crawl-up-walls-and-cross-obstacles","title":{"rendered":"Wriggling robot worms team up to crawl up walls and cross obstacles"},"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\/G-iKMihW4ZE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The slimy, segmented, bottom-dwelling California blackworm is about as unappealing as it gets\u2014but get a few dozen or thousand together, and they form a massive, entangled blob that seems to take on a life of its own.<\/p>\n<p>It may be the stuff of nightmares, but it is also the inspiration for a new kind of <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/robot\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">robot<\/a>. \u201cWe look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/biological+system\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">biological system<\/a>, and we say, \u2018Look how cool this is,\u2019\u201d said Senior Research Fellow Justin Werfel, who heads the Designing Emergence Laboratory at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Werfel is hooked on creating a robotic platform that\u2019s inspired by a wriggling ball of blackworms and that, like the <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/worms\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">worms<\/a>, can accomplish more as a group than as individuals.<\/p>\n<p>Recently garnering a <a href=\"https:\/\/2025.ieee-icra.org\/announcements\/ieee-robotics-and-automation-society-ras-announces-award-winning-papers-and-demonstrations-at-the-ieee-international-conference-on-robotics-and-automation-icra\/\" target=\"_blank\">Best Paper on Mechanisms and Design<\/a> award at the IEEE <a href=\"https:\/\/2025.ieee-icra.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">International Conference on Robotics and Automation<\/a>, the Harvard team\u2019s blackworm-inspired <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/robotic+platform\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">robotic platform<\/a> consists of soft, thin, worm-like threads made out of synthetic polymer materials that can quickly tangle together and untangle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The slimy, segmented, bottom-dwelling California blackworm is about as unappealing as it gets\u2014but get a few dozen or thousand together, and they form a massive, entangled blob that seems to take on a life of its own. It may be the stuff of nightmares, but it is also the inspiration for a new kind of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218011","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\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}