Quadruped Robot Performs Self-Amputation

If you ever wanted to see a soft quadruped robot performing self-amputation, today is your lucky day! The work is from Yale University and points toward future robots capable of radical shape shifting via changes in mass through autotomy and interfusion.

“So if the robot is doing its normal operations and walking around the wild, but then something happens to one of its legs - a big rock falls on it, for example - normally the whole robot would be stuck if it were cast in whole,” said Bilige Yang , a Ph.D. student and the lead author of the work. “But because we have the ability to melt away and weaken this joint where the material is, the rest of the robot will be able to walk away without its amputated leg.”