Scientists create robotic BEES with artificial soft ‘muscles’ that allow them to crash into walls unharmed
- Using soft electricity contracted components flight of a bee has been replicated
- The robot managed flight with two wings but was able to hover with eight
- Invention marks the first microrobot powered by soft artificial muscles
A group of scientists have created a resilient RoboBee, that can survive crashing into walls and other robots without being damaged.
The invention marks the first microrobot powered by soft artificial muscles that has achieved a controlled flight.
Researchers in the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) developed a resilient artificial bee powered by soft actuators.
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The resilient RoboBee, that can survive crashing into walls and other robots without being damaged
Often these soft components have been dismissed as too difficult to control as their flexibility can lead to the system buckling at weak points if pushed to activate movements at speed.
Yufeng Chen, a former graduate student and postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and first author of the paper, said: ‘There has been a big push in the field of microrobotics to make mobile robots out of soft actuators because they are so resilient.’
‘However, many people in the field have been skeptical that they could be used for flying robots because the power density of those actuators simply hasn’t been high enough and they are notoriously difficult to control.
‘Our actuator has high enough power density and controllability to achieve hovering flight.’
Researchers created a high power density in their actuators by building upon the work developed in the lab of David Clarke – using dielectric elastomers, soft materials with good insulating properties, that deform when an electric field is applied, creating movement.
To avoid the system buckling or becoming unstable they attached an ‘airframe’ – a series of constraining threads.
By improving the electrode conductivity, the researchers were able to operate the actuator at 500 Hertz, on par with the rigid actuators used previously in similar robots.
Several editions of the Robobee were built, with the four winged bee coming out on top as most stable at flying in cluttered environments and an eight-wing, four-actuator model demonstrating controlled hovering flight, the first for a soft-powered flying microrobot.
Elizabeth Farrell Helbling, a former graduate student at SEAS and a coauthor on the paper, said: ‘One advantage of small-scale, low-mass robots is their resilience to external impacts.
‘The soft actuator provides an additional benefit because it can absorb impact better than traditional actuation strategies.
To avoid the system buckling or becoming unstable they attached an ‘airframe’ – a series of constraining threads
‘This would come in handy in potential applications such as flying through rubble for search and rescue missions. ‘
Next, the researchers aim to increase the efficiency of the soft-powered robot, which still lags far behind more traditional flying robots.
Robert Wood, Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences in SEAS and senior author of the paper said: ‘Soft actuators with muscle-like properties and electrical activation represent a grand challenge in robotics.
‘If we could engineer high performance artificial muscles, the sky is the limit for what robots we could build.’
The research is published in Nature.
