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Enabling Collective Locomotion, Manipulation, and Navigation by Entangled Swarms of Soft R — NSF Award to Harvard University (MA,

This grant supports research to enable understanding and design of swarms of string-like soft robots, capable of moving around their environment independently, or of tangling together to operate as a collective. The project seeks to create programs for the individual robots to follow so that, when in their entangled st

Award titleEnabling Collective Locomotion, Manipulation, and Navigation by Entangled Swarms of Soft R
Award ID2431757
AwardeeHarvard University
CityCAMBRIDGE
StateMA
Amount obligated$600,000
Principal investigatorJustin Werfel
ProgramFRR-Foundationl Rsrch Robotics
Start date06/01/2026
AbstractThis grant supports research to enable understanding and design of swarms of string-like soft robots, capable of moving around their environment independently, or of tangling together to operate as a collective. The project seeks to create programs for the individual robots to follow so that, when in their entangled state, they can collectively move in response to external stimuli and transport or manipulate objects. For example, a swarm of individual robots might separately search an area for a
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