
New Robot Swims With No Motor and No Battery Caltech researchers have successfully engineered mini robots that can propel themselves and navigate their way through water using their own bodies' reactions to different temperatures. The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) announced in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week that its engineers in collaboration with ETH Zurich have successfully developed robots that can swim without a motor or even a power supply. These first-of-their-kind aquatic robots use self-propulsion to navigate through the water. The philosophy behind the devices is rather simply albeit ingenious. The aquatic machines are made from the material that deforms with temperature changes, shrinking and expanding to propel these mini robots through the water as if they were swimming. "Our examples show that we can use structured materials that deform in response to enviro...