Georgia Tech engineers have developed a soft robot capable of hopping forward and backward, inspired by the movements of a thin, body-bending parasitic worm. The study was published in Science Robotics.
The nematode-inspired soft robots are made of silicone rods with carbon-fiber spines. Image Credit: Candler Hobbs
Inspired by the unique locomotion of a minuscule parasitic worm, Georgia Tech engineers have developed a 5-inch soft robot capable of impressive leaps and reaching heights comparable to a basketball hoop.
This legless device, constructed from a silicone rod reinforced with a carbon-fiber spine, can jump an astonishing 10 feet into the air. The engineers drew inspiration from high-speed video footage of nematodes, which contort their bodies into unusual shapes to propel themselves forward and backward.
These robots are capable of navigating various terrains, leaping to different heights, and moving in multiple directions.
Nematodes are amazing creatures with bodies thinner than a human hair. They don’t have legs but can jump up to 20 times their body length. That’s like me laying down and somehow leaping onto a three-story building.
Sunny Kumar, Study Lead Coauthor and Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE), Georgia Institute of Technology
Nematodes, also known as roundworms, are among the most prevalent life forms on the planet. They inhabit diverse environments and live within humans, other vertebrates, and plants. While some nematodes can cause illness in their hosts, others can be beneficial. For example, farmers and gardeners utilize nematodes as a biological pest control method to eliminate harmful insects and safeguard plants, offering an alternative to chemical pesticides.
One way these microscopic worms attach themselves to a host before entering is by executing a jump. Using high-speed cameras, Victor Ortega-Jimenez, the lead author of the study and a former research scientist at Georgia Tech who is now a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, meticulously observed how these creatures contort their bodies into various shapes depending on their desired direction of movement.
It took me over a year to develop a reliable method to consistently make these tiny worms leap from a piece of paper and film them for the first time in great detail.
Victor Ortega-Jimenez, Study Lead Author and Former Research Scientist, Georgia Institute of Technology
Ortega-Jimenez is a Faculty Member at the University of California, Berkeley.
To jump backward, nematodes orient their heads upwards while constricting the middle of their bodies, forming a kink similar to a squatting human. From this position, the worm releases stored energy from its contorted form to propel itself backward, somersaulting end over end, much like a gymnast performing a backflip.
For a forward jump, the worm points its head directly forward and creates a kink at the opposite end of its body, angled high into the air. This posture resembles someone preparing for a standing long jump. However, instead of leaping horizontally, the worm launches itself vertically upward.
“Changing their center of mass allows these creatures to control which way they jump. We’re not aware of any other organism at this tiny scale that can effectively leap in both directions at the same height,” said Kumar.
Interestingly, they achieve these jumps even while bending their bodies almost into a knot.
Kinks are typically dealbreakers. Kinked blood vessels can lead to strokes. Kinked straws are worthless. Kinked hoses cut off water. But a kinked nematode stores energy that is used to propel itself in the air.
Ishant Tiwari, Postdoctoral Fellow and Study Lead Coauthor, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Following the video analysis, the research team developed computer simulations of the jumping nematodes. They then constructed soft robots designed to mimic the worms' leaping behavior, subsequently reinforcing these robots with carbon fibers to enhance the speed of their jumps.
Kumar and Tiwari are part of Associate Professor Saad Bhamla’s research group. They collaborated on this project with Ortega-Jimenez and researchers from the University of California, Riverside.
The team discovered that these kinks enable nematodes to store a greater amount of energy with each jump. This stored energy is then rapidly released – within a mere tenth of a millisecond – to execute the leap. Furthermore, the nematodes' bodies are resilient enough to repeat this jumping process multiple times.
The study indicates that engineers could potentially design simple elastic systems using materials like carbon fiber that can endure and capitalize on these kinks to create robots capable of hopping across diverse landscapes.
“A jumping robot was recently launched to the moon, and other leaping robots are being created to help with search and rescue missions, where they have to traverse unpredictable terrain and obstacles. Our lab continues to find interesting ways that creatures use their unique bodies to do interesting things, then build robots to mimic them,” said Kumar.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health under grant numbers R35GM142588 and R35GM137934 and by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers PHY-2310691 and CMMI-2218382.
Jumping Nematodes Inspire Soft Robotic Mechanism
Video Credit: Georgia Institute of Technology
Journal Reference:
Kumar, S., et al. (2025) Reversible kink instability drives ultrafast jumping in nematodes and soft robots. Science Robotics. doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adq3121