Turning robotic ensembles into smart materials that mimic life

Researchers have engineered groups of robots that behave as smart materials with tunable shape and strength, mimicking living systems. "We've figured out a way for robots to behave more like a material," said Matthew Devlin, a former doctoral researcher in the lab of University of California, Santa Barbara (USCB) mechanical engineering professor Elliot Hawkes, and the lead author of the article published in the journal Science.