INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Nature is a good source of inspiration for roboticists, but it rare that nature elegance and genius can be replicated in any real way
Still, we&re getting closer
This tiny insect-like robot is made of soft materials and weighs less than a gram, yet can move quickly and with some intelligence — and
is robust enough to survive a pounding from a fly swatter.
For the most part, tiny robots like this are compromises
For instance, they can move quickly, but only with external power
Or they can navigate intelligently, but only by being controlled remotely
Or they&re power efficient, but unable to move quickly or intelligently.
The DEAnsect, so called for being made of &dielectric elastomer
actuators,& is an attempt to create a robot that combines locomotion, intelligence and efficiency into a single package — even if it only
a little bit of each.
It moves with three little legs, each of which advances ever so slightly when an electric current changes the shape of
the elastomer they&re made of, pulling the robot forward a tiny bit
This happens many times per second, too fast for us to see, and giving the impression that the robot is sort of gliding forward at a rate of
0.3 body lengths per second
That not much compared to a cockroach or spider, but it pretty good compared to other self-powered small robots.
The efficiency and
sturdiness of these parts is a new record for soft robotics, and the DEAnsect is strong enough to carry around not just a battery but a bit
of onboard electronics (amounting to some five times its own 190 milligram weight) that let it operate with some rudimentary logic
For example, by attaching a tiny optical sensor the robot can be made to follow a black line and not stray onto a white surface.
It also
able to withstand a bit of abuse, fittingly in the form of a fly swatter, as you see in the gif at top
Of course, it needs to be scraped off the floor there first, but it very much to the robot credit that it can scoot again with no delay
afterwards.
Naturally there isn&t much a robot like this can do right now, but it a promising accomplishment nevertheless, showing a number
of interesting ways forward in the soft robotics field.
DEAnsect was created by Xiaobin Ji and Matthias Imboden at EPFL Soft Transducers
Laboratory and the rest of their team there
The robot is described in a paper published today in the journal Science Robotics.
