Natural disasters such as earthquakes, mine collapses, and cave accidents often create confined and unstable environments that endanger human rescuers and make timely intervention critical. Search and rescue (SAR) robots have been developed to reduce human risk, but existing systems — including tracked, legged, snake-like, and growth-based continuum platforms — rarely achieve some essential qualities simultaneously: low-cost fabrication, controllability, programmable shape, multi-modal locomotion, shape stability and reversibility. This limitation motivated the development of a new approach capable of adapting to path constraints and retracting to its initial position after task completion.
This work presents a straw-inspired search-and-rescue robot that enables controllable and reversible growth through the use of multistable frusta-based structures and pressure-driven actuation. Motorized clamping units selectively anchor and release the body, allowing the robot to extend step by step, steer, and retract when required. The development process included conceptualizing the motion strategy, building a prototype, and conducting experiments to evaluate basic locomotion performance.
