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Meet the World's First Completely Soft Robot
According to the MIT Technology Review, the octobot is a squishy little robot that fits in the palm of your hand and looks like something in a goody bag from a child’s birthday party. But despite its quirky name and diminutive size, this bot represents an astonishing advance in robotics.
Created by Harvard researchers, it’s the first soft robot that’s completely self-contained. It has no hard-electronic components—no batteries or computer chips—and moves without being tethered to a computer. Still missing are sensing and programming abilities that would afford more control over the robot’s movement. But the octobot is purposefully minimalist, meant just to show that such a soft robot can be made at all.