Forget about Terminator with his bulky gait and steely gaze. The future of robotics is crawling, wiggling its antennae and, perhaps, is about to fall on your head from the ceiling. While the giants of the industry are competing to make the manipulator more accurate, a group of stubborn scientists looked under their feet (or rather, under the baseboard) and found ideal engineers there — ordinary bugs.

It's not about the cyborgization of cockroaches, although it happens. No, this time researchers from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) staged a real "industrial espionage" of nature. Their goal is to unravel the main secret of insects.: how do they manage to run, jump and climb so famously with such primitive, by the standards of robotics, "equipment"?

So what's the magic? Soft drives!

If a classic robot's movement is provided by motors, gears, and servos (heavy, rigid, and requiring a lot of energy), then a beetle's work is performed by soft drives. Imagine not a motor, but rather... an inflatable balloon or a muscle. It is precisely such systems — fast, flexible and incredibly energy efficient — that have become prototypes for new robots.

The UCSD team, led by Professor Nick Gravysh, has developed just such bio-inspired drives. They are made of flexible silicone and are powered by pressure. Air was supplied, and the drive bent like a grasshopper's leg joint. The air was released, and it returned to its original position. No motors, no wires, just a continuous "pneumatic dance".

Why is it brilliant? Because it's simple and cheap!

The beauty of this technology is not in its complexity, but, on the contrary, in its primitive genius. Such drives:

Cheap to produce: They can literally be printed on a 3D printer, like cupcakes in molds.

Incredibly light: The robot does not spend 90% of its energy dragging itself.

Quiet: No humming of motors, just a slight rustle of silicone. Ideal for stealthy movement (espionage? what are you talking about!).

Durable: There are no fragile mechanics that are afraid of dust, sand and falling off the table.

What does it look like? To the nightmare of an entomophobe!

To demonstrate the potential of the technology, scientists have assembled several prototypes. And they look like they stepped out of the pages of a science fiction novel.:

Robot cockroach: Small, nimble and incredibly agile. He doesn't just drive in a straight line, but turns sharply and maneuvers with the agility of his living prototype, dreaming of your baby under the table.

Three-legged "jumper": This guy uses three soft drives at the same time to make sharp, explosive movements. Not a robot, but some kind of mechanical flea circus.

Gripping robot: And this is no longer a crawling, but a grabbing device. It wraps itself around a fragile object, like an insect's paw around a blade of grass, and holds it carefully. Ideal for capturing, say, a fragile space sample or... the last donut in a box.

So why all this? There is an application!

So far, these are laboratory prototypes, but they have huge potential where their big iron cousins cannot cope.:

Search and rescue operations: A flock of such beetles could penetrate the rubble after an earthquake through the narrowest crevices and search for survivors.

Exploring other planets: The lightweight and energy-efficient insect robot is the perfect scout for Mars or the Moon.

Medicine: Microscopic soft robots will one day be able to deliver medicines or perform surgeries right inside our body.

Sometimes, in order to make a giant technological breakthrough, you do not need to look at the stars, but bend down and see who is running across the floor. The future of robotics may not be shiny and metallic, but quiet, soft and desperately similar to what you just screamed and jumped on a chair. Get used to it!