West Virginia University roboticists are developing a groundbreaking robot named Loopy, which they envision as a transformative step in robot autonomy. Loopy is a multicellular robot made up of interconnected robot cells, designed to autonomously adapt and mark contamination zones like oil or toxin spills without direct human programming.
Supported by an award from the National Science Foundation, the WVU team is testing Loopy’s capacity for “co-design,” allowing it to determine its own shape and behavior with minimal human intervention. The design of Loopy draws inspiration from natural phenomena such as ant swarms and tree roots. Each cell of Loopy reacts organically to its surroundings, enabling the robot to change form in response to environmental constraints.
Yu Gu, the Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering Academy of Distinguished Alumni Professor at the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, leads the research. Gu believes Loopy’s ability to reshape itself could make it highly adaptive and responsive, offering capabilities unmatched by conventional robots.
“Loopy originated as a thought experiment in my lab,” Gu said. “It was conceived as a challenge to the prevalent ‘top down’ thinking in robotics, in which the robot is passive and the human designs, programs and builds it.”
Gu describes Loopy as an example of “swarm robotics,” a concept where numerous small robot cells interlink, leading to lifelike traits and coordinated behaviors that emerge from simple, decentralized reactions to stimuli.
Loopy consists of 36 identical cells arranged in a circle. Each cell has sensors to detect joint angle, light, and temperature, controlling its own movement. To evaluate Loopy, Gu’s lab has set up a tabletop test environment with overhead cameras, a motion capture system and a projector. Heating wires under the table simulate contamination areas, and an overhead thermal camera visualizes the heatmap while each cell detects temperature with embedded sensors.
With doctoral student Trevor Smith, Gu will test Loopy in various conditions, including different surface materials and obstacles. They aim to assess Loopy’s accuracy in encircling contamination areas, its responses to unexpected situations and its resilience in the face of incomplete or inaccurate information. These tests will be compared to a more conventional, human-controlled approach to robot design.
“The research progress on Loopy will likely be nonlinear and unpredictable,” Gu said. “More often than not, the outcome of our experiments with Loopy is unexpected, providing insights and driving future investigations.”
Gu plans to explore if Loopy’s self-organized solutions offer greater adaptability than predefined behaviors and how robotic swarms can be harnessed for practical applications. Potential uses for Loopy-like robots include adaptive leak sealing or interactive art displays.
Gu likens their approach to permaculture, where humans collaborate with nature to create sustainable ecosystems. “In our robot design process, there are three equal players: humans, the robot and the environment,” he said.
Loopy draws inspiration from plant intelligence, particularly how plant roots grow by coordinating responses to various stimuli, a process Gu used as a model for decentralized information sharing among robot cells.
“Plant roots grow by producing new cells,” Gu explained. “Each of those cells responds to extrinsic factors like the presence of water or nutrients and intrinsic factors like hormones. Those responses, en masse, coordinate root growth — where the roots go, the shapes they form. That’s just one biological mechanism underscoring the importance of distributed coordination, as opposed to centralized control, in complex systems.”
Gu believes that Loopy could fundamentally change the understanding of autonomy and adaptability in robotics. “This work blurs the lines between a robot’s physical form, its behavior and its environment,” he added.
