Engineers devise a modular system to produce efficient, scalable aquabots

The team has demonstrated the new system in two different example configurations, one like an eel and the other a wing-like hydrofoil. The work is being reported today in the journal Soft Robotics, in a paper by MIT research assistant Alfonso Parra Rubio, professors Michael Triantafyllou and Neil Gershenfeld, and six others. Existing approaches to soft robotics for marine applications are generally made on small scales, while many useful real-world applications require devices on scales of meters. “Scalability is a strong point for us,” says Parra Rubio. “Treating soft versus hard robotics is a false dichotomy,” Parra Rubio says.