The fields of soft and bio-inspired robotics promise to imbue synthetic systems with capabilities found in the natural world. However, many of these biological capabilities are yet to be realized. For example, vines in nature direct growth via localized responses embedded in the cells of vine body, allowing an organism without a central brain to successfully search for resources (e.g., light). Yet to date, vine-inspired robots have yet to show such localized embedded responsiveness. Here we present a vine-inspired robotic device with material-level responses embedded in its skin and capable of growing and steering toward either a light or heat stimulus. We present basic modeling of the concept, design details, and experimental results showing its behavior in response to infrared (IR) and visible light. Our simple design concept advances the capabilities of bio-inspired robots and lays the foundation for future growing robots that are capable of seeking light or heat, yet are extremely simple and low-cost.

翻译：软体机器人和仿生机器人领域有望赋予人造系统自然界中的能力。然而，许多此类生物能力尚未实现。例如，自然界中的藤蔓通过其藤蔓细胞中嵌入的局部响应来引导生长，使得这种没有中枢神经系统的生物能够成功搜索资源（如光源）。但迄今为止，藤蔓仿生机器人尚未展现出这种局部嵌入的响应能力。本文提出了一种藤蔓仿生机器人装置，其皮肤中嵌入了材料级响应，能够朝光源或热源生长并转向。我们展示了该概念的基本建模、设计细节以及其在红外光和可见光刺激下行为的实验结果。这一简单设计概念推进了仿生机器人的能力，并为未来能够搜索光源或热源的极简且低成本生长型机器人奠定了基础。