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Kaushik Jayaram and his colleagues debuted a small, shapeshifting robot named CLARI in 2023. The team later designed an even smaller model called mCLARI. (Credit: Casey Cass/CU Boulder)

Kaushik Jayaram envisions a day when swarms of tiny robots, some weighing no more than a paperclip, will crawl through airplanes or into buildings after an earthquake—searching for survivors or repairing components that no human could ever reach.

“Robots could be really helpful in confined spaces,” said Jayaram, assistant professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at CU Boulder. “If they’re small enough and adaptable enough and agile enough, they can get inside a jet engine, for example, or an underground conduit to inspect electrical pipelines.”

Kaushik Jayaram, right, in his lab with former graduate student Heiko Kabutz. (Credit: Casey Cass/CU Boulder)

Recently, the roboticist got a big leg up in pursuit of that vision: Jayaram has received a $650,000 grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to design small, shape-shifting robots that can complete a wide range of tasks. The funding is part of the NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program, its most prestigious awards for early-career scientists. In March, Jayaram and Laura Blumenschein at Purdue Universe also took home a complimentary $1.4 million grant from the Air Force Research Laboratory, the research wing of the U.S. Air Force.

The new projects will build on Jayaram’s previous designs, including mCLARI—a four-legged robot that can fit on top of a quarter and weighs less than half of a penny.

But to be really useful, these kinds of robots will need to be more than just small, Jayaram said. They will also need to be fast and powerful (agile), yet squishy enough to squeeze through cracks and around bends (adaptive). Those traits often bring trade-offs, but Jayaram wants to explore how robots can achieve both at the same time. ��

To meet that goal, he draws inspiration from what might seem an unlikely source: insects and other small creatures.

“Animals combine the best of both worlds—they can be really agile, but they’re also adaptable and able to respond to all kinds of new conditions,” he said. “We want to build highly intelligent mechanical systems that are just like those biological systems.”

Spider-bots

The researcher’s lab reveals those natural influences. Amid the circuit boards and soldering irons typical of robotics labs, Jayaram also keeps three different kinds of spiders: wolf spiders, which boast hairy legs, fishing spiders, which can stride over the surface of water, and crevice weaver spiders, which spend most of their lives in cracks and burrows.

These animals can do it all: Spiders can sprint when they need to be fast, turn on a dime and even stride up walls. If they want to crawl through a tight spot, they pull their legs in to shrink their bodies.

Through his new grants, Jayaram wants to build robots that can do those same things.

Currently, mCLARI changes shape, compressing its body when it encounters a narrow opening. But that process is passive—the robot simply squeezes down to fit the available space. Jayaram, in contrast, envisions robots that shape shift on command.

“If you want to be really fast, you can choose to be long and skinny,” he said. “If you want to be stable, then you can be wide. We need robots to be smart and shapeshift.”

Using pulses of electricity, the lab’s future robots will be able to not just shapeshift but also walk up walls or even along ceilings. The process relies on static electricity—the same thing that happens when you rub a balloon on your head. The group is also working to design a network of sensors that can extend over the bodies of their robots, allowing these machines to map out the world around them much like the eyes and skin of biological organisms do. ��

You probably won’t see tiny robots crawling over airplane wings in the next few years, Jayaram said. But within a decade, swarms of small robots may complete simple tasks, like crawling into pipes to fix electrical wires or take images of defects.

At the same time, he hopes to inspire the next generation of roboticists. His team has that give K-12 students the chance to build their own fully functional, bug-like robots. Kids can even choose how many legs to give their robots.

“We want kids to not be afraid of computers, and we’re doing that using biology,” Jayaram said. “Because everybody loves bugs.”