Working in the laboratory of Physics Professor Arshad Kudrolli, Ph.D. candidate Sohum Kapadia conducts experiments detailing how California blackworms move through water-filled spaces of various shapes and strictures. The research is expected to one day inform the development of “soft robots” that could worm their way through digestive tracts and other complex “terrains” within the human body.
“We are trying to understand how organisms and robots move through media which are not quite liquid or solid.”
Soft robots might also assist with the diagnoses of illness, the delivery of medicines and other treatments, and the development of more efficient surgical techniques.
Observing the biolocomotion patterns of worms is central to Kudrolli’s research, which lies at the nexus of biology, physics, and technology. With a core of student researchers, “We are trying to understand how organisms and robots move through media which are not quite liquid or solid,” Kudrolli said when the experimentation began several years ago. In his lab, conditions are created to approximate sand and water, clay, sludge, and even fluids in the human body, which he describes as “a giant hydrogel.”
The most recent round of experiments, led by Kapadia, entails the movements of worms through water to observe the creatures’ behavior when they are met with an obstruction to their forward progress, such as a 90-degree corner in a square tank.
Kudrolli recently received a $330,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the development of soft robots that could one day revolutionize the ways that emerging technologies influence biomedical science.