He's so cute.

The Japanese have finally done it. They have created a chemical gel that can walk like an inchworm. They have debuted this marvelously scary feat in there Japanese robotics laboratory.

Shingo Maeda and colleagues have made the color changing, motile substance by combining polymers that change size depending on their chemical environment.  This is based off of BZ ( Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction). Basically it means it can move without electricity. It moves by its self.  It looks cool. I’ll be watching this develop being that I’m a huge fan of BZ.  It basically like an organic robot. Wait isn’t that a human?

The BZ reaction is one of a class of chemical systems in which the concentration of one or more compounds periodically increases and decreases. As well as producing stunning patterns , it can even be used to perform calculations using a dish containing the pulsing patterns as a chemical brain.

The Polymers used in the gel shrink and grow in response to ruthenium bipyridine ions, alternately losing and gaining electrons in the cyclical reaction. That effect has been known for some time, but hasn’t been used to make a self-locomoting material on such a scale before, says Maeda.

“In previous work, the displacement of the mechanical oscillation of the gel was very small in comparison with the gel size,” he told New Scientist.

Maeda and colleagues created a gel that magnifies the small changes in size by building tension into it. That produces its curved shape as well as amplifying the material’s response to the oscillating reaction inside itself.

The gel shown in the video above is able to move thanks to a notched surface. But Maeda is now working on a new version that lies flat on a normal surface and moves using a peristaltic motion, like an earthworm or snail.

Go Gel, its your birthday.

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