I designed the Glaucus for Super-Releaser as a demonstration of soft robotics mechanisms and manufacturing techniques that can be scaled for mass manufacture.

The Glaucus is an open source soft walking quadruped made from a single piece of silicone. The manufacturing starts with 3d printed molds. These generate silicone molds – one set that produces the outer form of the Glaucus, and another that produces the wax core that floats inside the final casting. The interior channels that cause the Glaucus to distort when inflated are generated when this wax core is melted out of the silicone.

This design also demonstrates that soft robots can be integrated in a complex manner in the same way that biological creatures are. The Glaucus has ten actuators designed in, and walks using only two air inputs.

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You can download the source files for the Glaucus on Thingiverse, follow the tutorial on replicating it on Adafruit, and read more about its potential applications on Wired.