California blackworms constitute a recently identified animal system exhibiting unusual collective behaviors, in which dozens to thousands of worms entangle to form a “blob” capable of actions like locomotion as an aggregate. In this paper we describe a system of pneumatic soft robots inspired by the blackworms, intended for the study of collective behaviors enabled and mediated by such physical entanglement. Both the robots and worms have high aspect ratio ($\gtrsim 1: 50$), intertwine in complex 3D configurations, operate both in air and underwater, and can locomote both individually and as a collective. We demonstrate and characterize locomotion for both individual robots and entangled blobs, explore the tunability of entanglement strength, and compare these to the analogous versions in living worms. The robots provide a testbed for studying mechanisms underlying behaviors observed in worm blobs, as well as serving as a platform for studies of novel collective behaviors based on physical entanglement.

“Robot factors” design, analogous to ergonomics for humans, seeks to create devices and equipment that can be readily operated by robots, by considering typical capabilities of current robots throughout the design process. While a number of principles and heuristics for robot factors design have been identified, the successful design of hardware operable by autonomous robots often depends in practice on the designer's intuition about robot capabilities, developed through personal experience working with robots. Here we present a tool we have developed to help evaluate a potential device design for usability by a robot, by allowing a designer to in effect teleoperate a virtual robot and attempt the operation of the device. The tool uses a 3D physics-based simulation built in Unity, and a Phantom Omni / Geomagic Touch haptic device that controls the virtual robot's end-effector and provides force feedback. Through user studies, we show that the use of this tool can significantly improve a user's estimation of the suitability of a design for robot operation, in two case studies involving replacing a unit in a modular hardware system and unzipping a canvas bag. By incorporating the use of such a tool early in the design cycle, designers can more effectively develop equipment to be used by autonomous robots without themselves needing direct robotics experience; as a result, robots will be able to take on more tasks in the nearer term with current robot technology.