Structural Color Soft Robot Interacts with Environment

A soft robot with both color-changing and locomotion capabilities has been developed by a research team led by professor Xuemin Du from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Inspired by the color-changing capability of the chameleon, which can actively tune a lattice of light-reflecting nanocrystals in its top layer of skin to adapt to a changing environment, the structural color soft robot is able to sense modifications in the environment and exhibit vivid color alterations and programmable locomotion. Chameleon-inspired structural color soft actuators interact with the environment. Courtesy of professor Xuemin Du. The robot’s instant and reversible color change results from the...