School of Electromechanical and Automotive Engineering, Yantai University, Yantai 264005, China.
State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China.
Int J Mol Sci. 2022 Aug 25;23(17):9609. doi: 10.3390/ijms23179609.
The locomotor behavior of creatures in nature can bring a lot of inspiration for the fabrication of soft actuators. In this paper, we fabricated a bionic light-driven swimming soft robot that can perform grasping of tiny objects and achieve the task of object transfer. By adding carbon nanotubes (CNTs), the temperature-sensitive hydrogels can be endowed with light-responsive properties. The fabricated composite hydrogel structure can control the contraction and expansion of volume by light, which is similar to the contraction and diastole behavior of muscles. The oscillation of the fish tail and the grasping action of the normally closed micromanipulator can be achieved by the control of the irradiation of the xenon light source. The bending of the bionic arm can be controlled by the irradiation of a near-infrared (NIR) laser, which transforms the spatial position and posture of the micromanipulator. The proposed scheme is feasible for miniaturized fabrication and application of flexible actuators. This work provides some important insights for the study of light-driven microrobots and light-driven flexible actuators.
生物在自然界中的运动行为为软驱动器的制造带来了很多灵感。本文制造了一种仿生光驱动游泳软机器人，它可以抓取微小物体，并实现物体转移任务。通过添加碳纳米管（CNTs），温敏水凝胶可以赋予光响应特性。所制造的复合水凝胶结构可以通过光控制体积的收缩和扩张，类似于肌肉的收缩和舒张行为。通过控制氙光源的照射，可以实现鱼尾的摆动和常闭微操作器的抓取动作。仿生臂的弯曲可以通过近红外（NIR）激光的照射来控制，从而改变微操作器的空间位置和姿势。所提出的方案可用于小型化制造和应用柔性致动器。这项工作为光驱动微机器人和光驱动柔性致动器的研究提供了一些重要的见解。
