Biology Professor Barry Trimmer and biomedical engineering Professor David Kaplan are co-directors of the Biomimetic Technologies for Soft-bodied Robots project, funded under a $730,000 grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation.

"A major characteristic that distinguishes man-made structures from biological ones is the preponderance of stiff materials," said Trimmer. "In contrast, living systems may contain stiff materials, such as bone and cuticle, but their fundamental building blocks are soft and elastic.

"This distinction between biological and man-made objects is so pervasive that our evaluation of artificial or living structures is often made on the basis of the materials alone," he added. "Many machines incorporate flexible materials at their joints and can be tremendously fast, strong and powerful, but there is no current technology that can match the performance of an animal moving through natural terrain."

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