Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Bejing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China.
Nat Commun. 2018 Sep 26;9(1):3944. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-06491-9.
Developing untethered millirobots that can adapt to harsh environments with high locomotion efficiency is of interest for emerging applications in various industrial and biomedical settings. Despite recent success in exploiting soft materials to impart sophisticated functions which are not available in conventional rigid robotics, it remains challenging to achieve superior performances in both wet and dry conditions. Inspired by the flexible, soft, and elastic leg/foot structures of many living organisms, here we report an untethered soft millirobot decorated with multiple tapered soft feet architecture. Such robot design yields superior adaptivity to various harsh environments with ultrafast locomotion speed (>40 limb length/s), ultra-strong carrying capacity (>100 own weight), and excellent obstacle-crossing ability (stand up 90° and across obstacle >10 body height). Our work represents an important advance in the emerging area of bio-inspired robotics and will find a wide spectrum of applications.
开发能够在具有高效运动能力的恶劣环境中适应的无束缚毫机器人对于各种工业和生物医学应用中的新兴应用很有意义。尽管最近在利用软材料来赋予传统刚性机器人所没有的复杂功能方面取得了成功,但在湿、干条件下实现优异的性能仍然具有挑战性。受许多生物的灵活、柔软、有弹性的腿/脚结构的启发,我们在这里报告了一种带有多个锥形软足结构的无束缚软毫机器人。这种机器人设计具有出色的适应性,可以在各种恶劣环境中快速移动(速度超过 40 个肢体长度/秒),具有超强的承载能力(超过自重的 100 倍),并且具有出色的越障能力(可直立 90°并越过超过 10 个体高的障碍物)。我们的工作代表了仿生机器人这一新兴领域的重要进展,将有广泛的应用。