Snake-Inspired Robot Slithers Even Better Than Predecessor
April 23, 2019 | Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied SciencesEstimated reading time: 2 minutes
Bad news for ophiophobes: Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new and improved snake-inspired soft robot that is faster and more precise than its predecessor.
The robot is made using kirigami — a Japanese paper craft that relies on cuts to change the properties of a material. As the robot stretches, the kirigami surface “pops up” into a 3D-textured surface, which grips the ground just like snake skin.
The first-generation robot used a flat kirigami sheet, which transformed uniformly when stretched. The new robot has a programmable shell, meaning the kirigami cuts can pop up as desired, improving the robot’s speed and accuracy.
“This is a first example of a kirigami structure with non-uniform pop-up deformations,” said Ahmad Rafsanjani, a postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and first author of the paper. “In flat kirigami, the pop-up is continuous, meaning everything pops at once. But in the kirigami shell, pop up is discontinuous. This kind of control of the shape-transformation could be used to design responsive surfaces and smart skins with on-demand changes in their texture and morphology.”
The new research combined two properties of the material — the size of the cuts and the curvature of the sheet. By controlling these features, the researchers were able to program dynamic propagation of pop ups from one end to another, or control localized pop-ups.
In previous research, a flat kirigami sheet was wrapped around an elastomer actuator. In this research, the kirigami surface is rolled into a cylinder, with an actuator applying force at two ends. If the cuts are a consistent size, the deformation propagates from one end of the cylinder to the other. However, if the size of the cuts are chosen carefully, the skin can be programmed to deform at desired sequences.
“By borrowing ideas from phase-transforming materials and applying them to kirigami-inspired architected materials, we demonstrated that both popped and unpopped phases can coexists at the same time on the cylinder,” said Katia Bertoldi, the William and Ami Kuan Danoff Professor of Applied Mechanics at SEAS and senior author of the paper. “By simply combining cuts and curvature, we can program remarkably different behavior.”
Next, the researchers aim to develop an inverse design model for more complex deformations.
“The idea is, if you know how you’d like the skin to transform, you can just cut, roll and go,” said Lishuai Jin, a graduate student at SEAS and coauthor of the article.
This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation. It was coauthored by Bolei Deng.
Suggested Items
Japanese Joint Research Group win Prime Minister’s Award with Ultra High-performance Computing Platform
03/25/2024 | FujitsuA Japanese consortium of research partners including RIKEN, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Osaka University, Fujitsu Limited, and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) have been recognized with the prestigious Prime Minister’s Award.
Keysight Accelerates Its 6G Efforts with NVIDIA 6G Research Cloud Platform
03/22/2024 | Keysight Technologies, Inc.Keysight Technologies, Inc. is collaborating on the new NVIDIA 6G Research Cloud Platform, which includes the NVIDIA Aerial Omniverse Digital Twin, an open, flexible, and interconnected framework of network emulation resources offering researchers a comprehensive tool suite on which to develop new adaptations of artificial intelligence (AI) for radio access networks (RAN).
Foxconn Recognized as Top 100 Global Innovators 2024
03/07/2024 | FoxconnHon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn) announced it has been named a Top 100 Global Innovators™ 2024. The annual list from Clarivate™, a global leader in providing transformative intelligence, identifies organizations leading the world in technology research and innovation.
Siemens Joins Semiconductor Education Alliance to Address Skills and Talent Shortage in Global Semiconductor Industry
03/04/2024 | SiemensSiemens Digital Industries Software announced it has joined the Semiconductor Education Alliance to help build and nurture thriving communities of practice across the integrated circuit (IC) design and Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industries, from teachers and schools to universities, publishers, educational technology companies and research organizations.
Siemens Joins Semiconductor Education Alliance to Address Skills and Talent Shortage in Global Semiconductor Industry
02/29/2024 | Siemens Digital IndustriesSiemens Digital Industries Software announced today it has joined the Semiconductor Education Alliance to help build and nurture thriving communities of practice across the integrated circuit (IC) design and Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industries, from teachers and schools to universities, publishers, educational technology companies and research organizations.