SPROUT Robot – MIT’s Soft Robot for Search and Rescue

Meet SPROUT – the Soft Pathfinding Robotic Observation Unit from MIT and the University of Notre Dame. It’s a vine-like robot designed to squeeze through tight spaces in disaster zones to help emergency responders.

When buildings collapse, responders often face dangerous and exhausting conditions searching for survivors. SPROUT can take on some of that burden. It inflates and “grows” through rubble, navigating tight gaps where traditional robots struggle, all while sending back images and maps.

Think of it as a high-tech vine with a camera — not exactly your average houseplant.

The robot is joystick-operated, lightweight, and currently stretches up to 10 feet, with plans to expand that to 25. The design wasn’t without challenges — researchers had to engineer just the right air pressure and friction control to make it move precisely.

Tested with real rescue teams in Massachusetts, SPROUT is already proving it could be a valuable tool in emergencies — and maybe one day, in places like aircraft maintenance or infrastructure inspection.

A flexible robot that helps save lives? That’s a pretty good twist on the phrase growing into the job.

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