CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The slimy trail that snails and slugs putter along has long puzzled biologists. How is it that the creatures move along the goo — the thicker the goo, the faster they go, while a thinner trail of the stuff offers more resistance? Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers fascinated by those questions have built what might be the world's first robotic snail to study a matter that ultimately could lead to advancements in the medical world to allow doctors to provide more targeted treatment for cancer.
The project carries a twofold purpose: first, to understand how the snail's mode of locomotion works, and secondly, to observe how liquids behave at a very small scale, a field known as microfluidics.
"People have looked at the properties of slime in the past, but more from a biological point of view, not from the engineering angle," said Anette Hosoi, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. "So now we've begun to take a look at the mechanical side of the biology. It's like walking. It's a mechanical act, but not everyone has been concerned with the biology behind it."
To ponder the slime, Hosoi, graduate student Brian Chan and fellow assistant professor John Bush spent several weeks putting together a mass of unsophisticated gears, wiring and pieces of plastic to build a robotic snail. It measures about 10 inches in length and is housed in a rubbery membrane that moves forward on a thin layer of slime.
"It's very much $5 science," Hosoi said.
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