Dennis Hong, a robotics engineer at Virginia Tech, said research into "soft robotics" was part of a wider trend towards designing more flexible and innovative machines, such as his own "Whole Skin Locomotion" (WSL) robotic mechanism.

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In contrast, a NoSQL database provides a more flexible data model, and it can be scaled across multiple machines.

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And for those worried about machines taking over, more research will be carried out into what Dr Jennings calls flexible autonomy.

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Second, sharing out a particular task among several machines would be reliable (you would not have all your eggs in one basket) and flexible.

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