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. Potential applications include solar tracking, and in the future, firefighting smoldering fires. We envision using similar robots to find hot spots in hard-to-access environments, allowing us to put out potentially long-burning fires faster.

翻译：软体机器人和仿生机器人领域有望赋予人工系统自然界中的能力。然而，许多生物能力尚未实现。例如，自然界中的藤蔓通过嵌入藤蔓体细胞中的局部响应来引导生长，使得没有中央大脑的生物体能够成功搜索资源（例如光照）。但迄今为止，类藤蔓机器人尚未展现出这种局部嵌入的响应能力。本文提出了一种具有材料级响应的类藤蔓机器人装置，其皮肤内嵌响应机制，能够朝向光照或热刺激生长并转向。我们展示了该概念的基础建模、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。这一简洁的设计理念推动了仿生机器人的能力发展，并为未来能够搜索光照或热量的简单低成本生长型机器人奠定了基础。潜在应用包括太阳能追踪，以及未来用于扑灭阴燃火灾。我们设想利用类似机器人在难以进入的环境中寻找热点，从而更快地扑灭可能长时间燃烧的火灾。