Snake robots are becoming faster and more precise all the time. SEAS researchers have built a new soft snake robot using kirigami. Here is how it works:

As the robot stretches, the kirigami surface “pops up” into a 3D-textured surface, which grips the ground just like snake skin. The new research combined two properties of the material — the size of the cuts and the curvature of the sheet. By controlling these features, the researchers were able to program dynamic propagation of pop ups from one end to another, or control localized pop-ups

The researchers are now aiming to develop an inverse design for more complex deformations. You can find out more about this here.