This Robotic Hand Stays Cool by Sweating

A new robotic hand has a surprisingly humanlike way to cool off: it can sweat. This isn't a traditional all-metal construction bot, in which case oozing water would probably mean something’s going wrong, or pose a threat to the electronics inside. The sweaty robot, described in a new study in Science Robotics, is made of flexible hydrogels. Hydrogel robots, also called “soft” robots, are useful because they’re less dangerous—say, for example, a factory worker hits their head on one—compared to colliding with something made of metal. But soft robots also come with a different set of engineering challenges.