These flexible feet help robots walk faster

Would you believe it takes coffee grounds to achieve that?



"The feet are flexible spheres made from a latex membrane filled with coffee grounds. Structures inspired by nature‒ such as plant roots‒ and by man-made solutions‒ such as piles driven into the ground to stabilize slopes‒ are embedded in the coffee grounds.



The feet allow robots to walk faster and grip better because of a mechanism called granular jamming that allows granular media, in this case the coffee grounds, to go back and forth between behaving like a solid and behaving like a liquid. When the feet hit the ground, they firm up, conforming to the ground underneath and providing solid footing."



These flexible feet help robots walk faster Roboticists at the University of California San Diego have developed flexible feet that can help robots walk up to 40 percent faster on uneven terrain such as pebbles and wood chips. The work has applications for search-and-rescue missions as well as space exploration.