Feather star-inspired underwater soft robot achieves 3D maneuverability with only two actuators

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed an underwater soft robot inspired by feather stars that achieves three-dimensional maneuverability—up and down, forward and backward, and rotation about an axis—using only two actuators, whereas such motion typically requires at least six. The robot uses four elastic monostable wings and completes hovering, translation, and steering through combinations of a jellyfish mode, a fish mode, and a rotor mode. The research has demonstrated the robot carrying a camera to explore underwater spaces and cooperating with multiple robots to lift objects; a fully wireless version is still in development, and the paper was published in Science Advances.