Bio-Inspired Robotics Lab

University of Cambridge

Tasty Hands: Edible and Biodegradable Soft Robots of the Future!

We will introduce a gelatin-glycerol hydrogel material which exhibits soft properties similar to silicone but is also conductive, biodegradable and edible! We will show how the development of this material was enabled by modern additive manufacturing techniques by 3D printing it live on camera. You’ll get to see its deformable and conductive properties in pre-made soft wearable devices and sensors. We will then demonstrate the material’s edible and biodegradable properties by making a robot dip a strawberry in melted chocolate followed by biting into the robot’s gripper. You read that right, we will eat a robot live on camera!




Meet the Team

The research interests of the Bio-Inspired Robotics Lab lie at the intersection of robotics and biology. Through the abstraction of the design principles of biological systems, we develop core competencies which are the design and control of dynamic mechatronics systems, bionic sensor and actuator technologies, and computational optimization techniques. Our main goals are to contribute to a deeper understanding of the adaptivity and autonomy of animals through the investigation of dynamic robots and to engineer novel robotic applications which are more adaptive, manoeuvrable, resilient, and energy-efficient.