Northwestern University researchers have developed a robot made of soft materials. It can walk at human speed, pick up and transport cargo to a new location, and climb up hills.
According to the TechXplore website, the centimeter-sized robot moves without complex hardware. Instead, it is activated by light and walks in the direction of an external rotating magnetic field. Resembling a four-legged octopus, the robot can function inside a water-filled tank, making it ideal for use in aquatic environments.
"Conventional robots are typically heavy machines with lots of hardware and electronics that are unable to interact safely with soft structures, including humans," said Samuel Stupp, who led the experimental research. "We have designed soft materials with molecular intelligence to make robots function in tiny spaces, underwater or underground," he explained.
"The design of the new materials that imitate living creatures allows not only a faster response but also the performance of more sophisticated functions. We can change the shape and add legs to the synthetic creatures, and give these lifeless materials new walking gaits and smarter behaviors. This makes them highly versatile and amenable to different task," Stupp said.
The secret to the robot's precise movement and agility lies within its water-filled structure and the embedded skeleton of aligned nickel filaments that are ferromagnetic. The soft component is a molecularly designed network with parts that allow it to respond to light, hold or expel water in its interior, and have just the right stiffness to respond rapidly to magnetic fields, the research team said.
When exposed to rotating magnetic fields, the embedded skeleton in the bent robot exerts cyclic forces on the soft molecular network and activates the legs. The rotating field can be programmed to navigate the robot along a pre-determined path.
