Robotics has long been a world dominated by metal — until now. Scientists have developed a new kind of completely soft robot, devoid of any hard or electronic parts, in a development that carries far ...

A soft robot, attached to a balloon and submerged in a transparent column of water, dives and surfaces, then dives and surfaces again, like a fish chasing flies. Soft robots have performed this kind ...

If you ever get a chance to go to Leiden, take it. It is a beautiful little city that hides some high-power university research. It also boasts the world’s first rubber computer. You won’t be running ...

In a paper published in PNAS, physicists from Leiden University in the Netherlands have used a piece of corrugated rubber as a computer. The rubber is placed in a press and then slowly crushed by it.