Tiny Robot made of Rubber by German Researchers can Walk, Crawl, Jump and Swim

[samuelthegreat]

Tiny Robot made of Rubber by German Researchers can Walk, Crawl, Jump and Swim

Important differences notwithstanding, the majority of small-scale robots available today have very limited range of motion, which mostly comes down to their rigid bodies.

 

Soft robots, on the other hand, are capable of a broader range of locomotion, the latter being one of the reasons for the attention they have been receiving as of late.

 

In a paper published on 24 January in the journal Nature, a group of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Germany present a tiny, millimetre-scale robot capable of traversing both liquid and solid terrains.

 

The robot is made of an elastomer rubber filled with tiny magnetic particles with specific properties which have been programmed by the researchers. Once a magnetic field is applied, the robot changes shape and starts to move.

 

Soft robots are becoming faster, more agile, and diverse. Researchers hope to eventually use them inside the human body for medical purposes. Image courtesy of the Max Planck Society.

 

According to one of the co-authors of the paper, Metin Sitti, the key driver behind their research is the need to build microscopic robots to navigate inside our bodies and deliver payloads (such as drugs) in hard-to-reach places.

 

“The robots already are small enough for our digestive system and urinary system. We’d like to go smaller, even down to tens of microns, so that we can reach almost anywhere inside your body,” Sitti said in an interview with the New York Times.

 

One way of accomplishing that is by having the robot grab — and eventually deliver — its cargo by a simple change in shape; another is to have a small pocket on its surface which can only be opened by triggering a specific shape, thereby ensuring safety.

 

The current design was inspired by a variety of animals whose movement patterns could potentially be useful in navigating the difficult terrains within our bodies.

 

“That’s another scientific challenge we solved in this study — how you can combine the caterpillars, jellyfish and all these different, small, soft organisms into one relatively minimalist robot that can achieve all different types of motion to navigate in complex environments.”

 

Sitti and his team are currently working on making the robot fully biodegradable without causing side effects to human tissue. “That’s one of our major goals in my group. And that’s possible”.

 

story credit here --> https://www.technology.org/2018/01/27/tiny-robot-made-of-rubber-by-german-researchers-can-walk-crawl-jump-and-swim/