Soft Robotics Week 2

I’d like to explore the Cape Sundew plant.

This plant has hundreds of small articulating extrusions, each with a sticky bulbous tip. When an insect lands on the plant, those little extremities can fold in on the bug, pushing into the stem, covering it in digestive fluids.

In addition to this movement, the plant itself can curl to add more pressure to the insect, like an elephant trunk.

This plant is fascinating because of the sheer number of kinetic elements on its surface. The kind of internal chemical network that it would have to have in order to be able to pull signals from so many inputs is amazing. I wonder if they are networked like a circuit in series or parallel? Probably parallel but plants are “wired” in mysterious ways.

I think that elements from the Cape Sundew would offer great explorations in soft robotics. I can see each tiny extrusion being manipulated with muscle wire or magnetic pull to hold onto small objects in a factory. I could also see those little points being sensors that could possibly test an object for quality assurance (how much sulphur, chlorine, etc is in the object) or even test it for conductivity as the larger limb coils around it.