INSIGHTS / News

Robots that decompose once they have reached the end of their mission could soon be deployed in the environment, thanks to a Research Project Grant of over £200,000 from the Leverhulme Trust.

Dr Jonathan Rossiter, Senior Lecturer in the University of Bristol’s Department of Engineering Mathematics and a member of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL), has secured the two-year Research Project Grant for his project ‘A robot that decomposes: towards biodegradable robotic organisms’.

Dr Rossiter, together with co-investigator Dr Ioannis Ieropoulos, Senior Research Fellow in the BRL, Department of Engineering, Design and Mathematics at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), aim to show that autonomous soft robotic artificial organisms can exhibit an important characteristic of biological organisms: graceful decomposition after death.

Dr Rossiter said: “In this project we will take a radical step away from conventional robots and we hope to create a biodegradable robot.

Read the full story on the University of Bristol website