Engineering and Technology

Multimodal locomotion ultra-thin soft robots for exploration of narrow spaces

X. Wang, S. Li, et al.

Introducing Thin Soft Robots (TS-Robots), just 1.7 mm thick, these incredible machines can traverse narrow spaces and adapt to various environments, including solid, liquid, and aerial domains. With their unique actuation and high performance, they exhibit impressive locomotion capabilities, crawling, climbing, and swimming with ease. This groundbreaking research was conducted by Xi Wang, Siqian Li, Jung-Che Chang, Jing Liu, Dragos Axinte, and Xin Dong.

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Abstract

This paper introduces Thin Soft Robots (TS-Robots), 1.7 mm thick, capable of multimodal locomotion in narrow spaces and across multiple domains (solid, liquid, aerial). These robots utilize a dual-actuation sandwich structure with a tuneable Poisson's ratio tensioning mechanism driven by dielectric elastomers. They demonstrate linear and undulating gaits, high output force (~41 times their weight), and speed (1.16 body length/s and 13.06 body thickness/s). The TS-Robots are shown crawling, climbing, swimming, and collaborating for domain transitions in confined environments.

Publisher

Nature Communications

Published On

Jul 26, 2024

Authors

Xi Wang, Siqian Li, Jung-Che Chang, Jing Liu, Dragos Axinte, Xin Dong

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