New way to get bugged
By UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
 |
| The bug-inspired robot designed by M. Ravi Shankar’s Lab. Credit: The Shankar Research Group |
University of Pittsburgh Engineers Create Insect-Inspired Robots That Can Monitor Hard-to-Reach Spots.
These ancient creatures can squeeze through the tiniest cracks,
fit snugly into tight spaces and survive in harsh environments: There aren’t
many spaces that are off-limits to an insect.
That’s why researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have
created tiny bug-inspired robots that can carry out tasks in hard-to-reach
spaces and inhospitable environments.
“These robots could be used to access confined areas for imaging or environmental evaluation, take water samples, or perform structural evaluations,” said Junfeng Gao, who led the work as a PhD student in industrial engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering. “Anywhere you want to access confined places—where a bug could go but a person could not—these machines could be useful.”
For many creatures under a certain size—like trap-jaw ants, mantis
shrimp, and fleas—jumping across a surface is more energy-efficient than
crawling. Those impulsive movements were replicated in the robots, which are
made of a polymeric artificial muscle.
“It’s akin to loading an arrow into a bow and shooting it—the robots latch on to build up energy and then release it in an impulsive burst to spring forward,” explained M. Ravi Shankar, professor of industrial engineering at Pitt whose lab led the research.
“Usually, actuation in the artificial muscles we work with is fairly slow. We were drawn to the question, ‘How do we take this artificial muscle and use it to generate a jumping actuation rather than slow actuation?’”
The answer lay in the interplay of molecular order and geometry.
“The curved composite shape of the polymer muscle allows it to
build energy when it is powered. The way the molecules are aligned in the
muscle draws inspiration from the natural world, where their combined actuation
builds energy into the structure,” said Mohsen Tabrizi, co-author of the study
and PhD student in industrial engineering at the Swanson School. “This is
accomplished using no more than a few volts of electricity.”
The versatile movement and lightweight structure enables the
robots—which are about the size of a cricket—to move along moving surfaces like
sand as easily as hard surfaces, and even to hop across water.
Reference: “Molecularly Directed, Geometrically Latched, Impulsive
Actuation Powers Sub-Gram Scale Motility” by Junfeng Gao, Arul Clement, Mohsen
Tabrizi and M. Ravi Shankar, 1 October 2021, Advanced Materials Technologies.
DOI: 10.1002/admt.202100979