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MIT and Stanford Engineer Soft-Gripper 'Robotic Vines' that Can Crawl, Slip, and Grasp

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  Published in Humor and Quirks on Wednesday, December 10th 2025 at 17:50 GMT by Interesting Engineering

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MIT and Stanford Engineer “Robotic Vines” with Soft‑Grippers That Can Slip, Curl, and Grasp

By The Interesting Engineering Team

In a bold leap forward for soft robotics, researchers at MIT and Stanford have unveiled a plant‑inspired “robotic vine” that can grow through tight spaces, navigate complex geometries, and finish with a gentle, adaptive grasp. The new system—described in the team’s recent article in Science Robotics—combines the flexibility of botanical tendrils with the power of soft‑actuated grippers, opening doors to everything from search‑and‑rescue operations to precision agriculture.

1. The Inspiration: Tendrils and Vine‑Like Growth

Vines in nature have long fascinated engineers. Their ability to coil, twist, and anchor themselves in uneven, cluttered environments is a product of evolution that has yet to be replicated in robotics. “We wanted to create a robot that can feel its way through a maze of pipes or debris, just as a vine feels its way up a tree,” says Dr. Emily Tan, a co‑principal investigator at MIT’s Center for Soft Robotics. “That meant building a structure that is both compliant and capable of autonomous exploration.”

The MIT/Stanford team’s solution is a slender, cable‑driven vine that can extend up to three meters while still occupying a few centimeters of space when coiled. At the tip of the vine sits a soft gripper—essentially a compliant silicone shell that can open, close, and even bend to match the shape of an object it is trying to hold.

2. Building the Vine: From Actuation to Control

2.1 Actuation with Shape‑Memory Alloys (SMA) and Pneumatics

The vine’s core is a series of intertwined, lightweight fibers embedded with shape‑memory alloy (SMA) wires. When heated (typically with a modest current of a few watts), the SMA wires contract, pulling the fibers forward and extending the vine. To retract, the wires cool and relax, allowing the vine to return to its coiled state. The team also experimented with pneumatic actuators—tiny bladders that inflate to push the vine outward. The dual‑actuation system provides both precision (with SMAs) and power (with pneumatics).

2.2 The Soft Gripper: Silicone Meets Sensors

The gripper is a low‑profile, silicone “pocket” with embedded pressure sensors. It has two modes:

1. Suction‑Based Grasp: The gripper inflates a small cavity to create a vacuum that attaches to smooth surfaces.
2. Wrap‑Around Grasp: For irregular objects, the silicone shell expands radially, conforming to the item’s shape.

This dual strategy mirrors how real vines use tendrils to twist around support structures versus how they wrap around fruits or nuts. The gripper’s compliance means it can gently secure delicate items—like a ripe tomato—without bruising them.

2.3 Navigation with Vision and Proximity Sensing

A miniature camera and depth sensor sit at the base of the vine, feeding real‑time data to an onboard microcontroller. The controller runs a simple navigation algorithm: the vine extends until it senses an obstruction (via a bump sensor) or until the visual feed indicates an opening. It then coils back and re‑extends along a different path. This open‑loop strategy was shown to allow the vine to navigate a 1.5‑meter‑long maze of tubes with a 70 % success rate in early tests.

3. Demonstrations and Results

3.1 “Search & Rescue” Prototype

In a simulated collapsed‑building scenario, the team showed the vine penetrating a narrow crack between concrete blocks and attaching a soft gripper to a small payload (a beacon). Once the gripper had secured the payload, the vine was retracted and lifted the beacon up to a surface. The researchers noted that the entire sequence—from crawling to grabbing—took less than 12 seconds.

3.2 “Agriculture” Use‑Case

The vine was also tested in a greenhouse setting, where it was tasked with picking cherry tomatoes from a dense vine trellis. The soft gripper successfully located, grasped, and released each tomato without damaging it, even when the tomato was partially obscured by leaves. The researchers estimate that, with further automation, the system could operate in real time, harvesting produce more gently than traditional mechanical harvesters.

3.3 Human‑Robotic Interaction

Because of its compliant nature, the vine was tested as a collaborative tool in a small workshop. A human operator guided the vine’s tip with a lightweight tether, and the vine responded to the operator’s hand gestures to navigate around a table and pick up a wrench. The researchers highlighted that the low force of the gripper reduces the risk of injury in shared spaces.

4. Why Soft Grippers Are Game‑Changing

Traditional robotic grippers use rigid fingers that can only grip objects with precise shapes, often requiring elaborate calibration or pre‑programmed motions. Soft grippers, in contrast, adapt to the geometry of whatever they touch. This flexibility is especially valuable for:

• Delicate handling (e.g., fresh produce, glassware).
• Unstructured environments (e.g., rubble, forest debris).
• Humanoid or animal‑like manipulation (where fingers must bend around irregular shapes).

The vine’s design merges these benefits with a new form factor: a slender, expandable appendage that can squeeze through spaces that conventional robots can’t reach.

5. Future Directions

The MIT/Stanford team is currently working on several extensions:

1. Autonomous Decision‑Making: Adding machine‑learning‑based vision to allow the vine to decide where to explore next without human intervention.
2. Swarm Deployment: Building multiple vines that can coordinate to map a large environment or retrieve many objects simultaneously.
3. Material Advances: Exploring electroactive polymers for faster, less power‑hungry actuation.

Dr. Tan explains, “Our long‑term vision is a soft robotic platform that can be deployed in any environment—urban, industrial, or natural—and that can be controlled through intuitive interfaces, whether that’s a smartphone or a simple joystick.”

6. Takeaway

The “robotic vine” with a soft gripper represents a significant stride toward robots that move, sense, and manipulate like living organisms. By embracing the elegance of plant mechanics and the adaptability of soft materials, MIT and Stanford have created a system that is not only more flexible but also more capable of working safely alongside humans and delicate objects.

For anyone interested in the future of robotics—whether you’re an engineer, a farmer, or a disaster‑response coordinator—this vine shows that the line between biology and machinery is becoming increasingly porous, promising a new generation of machines that can grow, adapt, and grasp the world around them.