In a significant breakthrough, engineers at Princeton and North Carolina State University leveraged the ancient art of paper-folding and cutting-edge materials science, designing a soft, caterpillar-shaped robot capable of effortlessly navigating complex paths.
Steering soft robots has proven a formidable challenge, largely due to the rigidity conventional steering mechanisms introduce. This revolutionary design bypasses this issue by integrating the guidance system directly into the robot's body, according to Princeton's postdoctoral researcher Tuo Zhao.
The technical details of the robot were detailed in a PNAS article published on May 6. The soft robot is composed of modular, cylindrical segments that can function autonomously or merge into a longer form, resulting in a flexible robot capable of driving forth and reverse, transporting loads, and elongating into varying lengths.
"The idea of modular soft robots provides insights into future robots capable of growth, self-repair, and the development of novel features," the authors claim in their article.
The robot's ability to assemble and disassemble while in motion provides the potential for the system to function as a single unit or a swarm, as per Zhao. He further elucidates the mechanism, stating, "Each segment can be a standalone unit, and they can interact with each other and assemble upon command. They can easily separate, and we use magnets to unite them."
The research conducted in Glaucio Paulino's lab situated in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Princeton Materials Institute laid the foundations for this robot. The team used a form of origami known as the Kresling pattern to craft their cylindrical robot segments. The pattern permits the segments to collapse into a flattened disk shape and subsequently return into a cylindrical form.
An electrothermal actuator, built from an elastic conductor made of silver nanowires, serves as the robot's propulsion mechanism. This material, as Yong Zhu, a prominent researcher, asserts, enhances the building blocks for a variety of stretchable electronic appliances including heaters used for bending and folding operations.
The researchers admit that the current version of the robot has a limited speed, with an aim to augment the same in future iterations. Furthermore, they plan to experiment with diverse shapes, patterns, and forms of instability to enhance both speed and control.
Disclaimer: The above article was written with the assistance of AI. The original sources can be found on ScienceDaily.
