Individual and Collective Behaviors in Soft Robot Worms Inspired by Living Worm Blobs

Abstract

California blackworms constitute a recently identified animal system exhibiting unusual collective behaviors, in which dozens to thousands of worms entangle to form a “blob” capable of actions like locomotion as an aggregate. In this paper we describe a system of pneumatic soft robots inspired by the blackworms, intended for the study of collective behaviors enabled and mediated by such physical entanglement. Both the robots and worms have high aspect ratio (<tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\gtrsim 1: 50$</tex>), intertwine in complex 3D configurations, operate both in air and underwater, and can locomote both individually and as a collective. We demonstrate and characterize locomotion for both individual robots and entangled blobs, explore the tunability of entanglement strength, and compare these to the analogous versions in living worms. The robots provide a testbed for studying mechanisms underlying behaviors observed in worm blobs, as well as serving as a platform for studies of novel collective behaviors based on physical entanglement.