Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, December 5, according to the official website of Tsinghua University, recently, the research group of Professor Zhang Yihui of the School of Astronautics and Astronautics of Tsinghua University has developed a three-dimensional electric drive soft driver with customizable configuration and active stiffness adjustment, and based on this, a multi-gait micro software robot (body length from 6mm to 90mm and mass from 0.2g to 3g) has been designed and fabricated. It can climb on different surfaces (such as plane, cylinder, wavy surface, wedge-shaped groove surface and sphere) and transition between two different surfaces.

Because of its tiny body, micro-robot with climbing ability can replace human beings to carry out special tasks in complex and unstructured environment, and has great application value in detection, biomedicine and so on. Muscle-like soft actuators composed of soft materials can provide excellent flexibility, adaptability and mechanical robustness for robots, and the corresponding micro-software climbing robots have also been widely concerned by researchers. However, there is still a great challenge to realize the micro-software climbing robot to climb on a variety of surfaces, or even to transition between two different surfaces.

In this study, based on the customized driving strain design strategy and buckling assembly method of liquid crystal elastomers, a series of small-scale electrothermal actuators with customizable three-dimensional deformation ability have been developed. it has rich three-dimensional configuration and various driving deformation capabilities. By comparing the existing electrically driven 3D drivers (limited to non-liquid working environments), such drivers can achieve complex deformation effects and maximum bending angles at the millimeter scale (from 1 mm to 10 mm). In addition, the actuator has the characteristics of shape recovery and adjustable stiffness under the action of temperature (figure 1).

Figure 1. Preparation method and performance characterization of micro software actuator. Figure A shows a schematic diagram of the preparation process of the driver; figure B shows a three-dimensional driver with complex deformation effect; figure C shows the characterization of the deformation effect of a circular arc driver; and figure D shows a comparison of the deformability of the existing electrical response drivers. The E figure shows that the stiffness change of the driver is characterized by the micro soft climbing robot based on the above customizable three-dimensional actuator, which consists of three parts: reconfigurable electrostatic adsorption soles, deformable body and intelligent joints. Through the characterization and analysis of the deformation performance and foot adsorption performance of the robot, the robot can climb on the inner and outer side of the cylindrical surface, wavy surface, wedge-shaped surface and spherical surface. Inspired by various movement gaits of plankton hydra, through the control of variable stiffness "smart joints", the robot can switch on demand among step, "somersault" advance and flip transition. Eventually, the robot can climb walls of different materials, roughness and shapes, and transition between two different walls (figure 2).

Figure 2. Design and demonstration of movement ability of micro-software climbing robot. Picture A shows a separate view of the various components of the robot; figure B shows an optical image of the robot with a body length of 6mm; and picture C shows the ability of the robot to climb and transition between walls of different materials and shapes. Zhang Yihui introduced that after "unlocking" this new skill, the micro-software climbing robot can enter some narrow and complex environments to perform detection and other tasks instead of human beings. For example, in complex systems such as aircraft engines and refiners, the robot can go through all kinds of curved surface structures such as pipes and gears, and arrive at the designated position for fault detection and other tasks.

CTOnews.com learned that the research was published on November 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) under the title "A soft microrobot with highly deformable 3D actuators for climbing and transitioning complex surfaces based on deformable 3D drivers that can climb and transition on complex surfaces."

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