in Germany created a robot that could mimic a pangolins’ roly-poly resiliency. Instead of doing so for protection, however, the miniature robot uses its scaly design to quickly traverse environments while simultaneously carrying small payloads. With an added ability to heat to over 70 degrees Celsius , the team’s barely two-centimeter-long robot shows immense promise for delivering medication within patients, as well as helping in procedures such as mitigating unwanted internal bleeding.
The pangolin-inspired robot features a comparatively simple, two-layer design—a soft polymer layer studded in magnetic particles, and a harder exterior layer of overlapping metal scales. Exposing the robot to a low-frequency magnetic field causes it to roll into a cylindrical shape, and subsequently directing the magnetic field can influence the robot’s movement.