Sadly, robots are not immortal, and there’s some surprising reasons why they shouldn’t be, beyond the obvious hedge against them taking over. Why do we need biodegradable robots? 

What do you imagine when you think of a robot? Something shiny, metal and chrome?

Well, that view may be changing. Researchers have been working on soft robots for a few years for various applications. Often inspired by octopusses & worms, soft bots are used to grasp objects softly, or for specific kinds of locomotion. Their soft, pliable coating comes in handy when you want to shake a robot’s hand without cutting yourself or getting crushed.

But soft bots have a problem. Being made of mostly plastic, they become trash once discarded. So researchers have been looking into building more eco-friendly bots.

Eco friendly soft-bots? How!

In 2022 researchers made biodegradable ink to 3D print robots. The ink was mede of a combination of gelatin and sugar, resulting in a material that could be stretched six times its own length and used five times before eventually degrading without a trace.

Has there been progress since then?

This year, researchers came out with a biodegradable soft robot that kind of looks like a polygonal worm. Both the robot and controller are made of glycerol and plant cellulose that can decompose, just like you and me. For the sensors they used conductive pork gelatin. Yum.

The researchers are also calling it an ‘origami robot’ because it is modular and it can fold and move around when controlled by the user.

Being biodegradable, how sturdy are they?

The robots from this study withstood a week of heavy use, after which the team buried them on campus and dug them back up after 8 weeks, and they were almost entirely gone!

Future applications?

The team envisions using these bots to clean up hazardous waste & then dissolve. But they state the bots could also be helpful in surgery, after which they’d dissolve in the body.

Still, some hurdles remain. They are still working on designing a biodegradable power supply to give these biodegradable little robots-worms some kick!

Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41578-025-00786-2

As covered on a segment of the Daily Tech News Show on July 3rd 2025. For a more detailed discussion of the topic, listen here: