A team of researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has developed a soft robot that uses those same principles of locomotion to crawl without any rigid components.
The soft robotic scales are made using kirigami – an ancient Japanese paper craft that relies on cuts, rather than origami folds, to change the properties of a material. As the robot stretches, the flat kirigami surface is transformed into a 3D-textured surface, which grips the ground just like snakeskin.
The researchers started with a simple, flat plastic sheet. Using a laser cutter, they embedded an array of centimeter-scale cuts, experimenting with different shapes and sizes. Once cut, the researchers wrapped the sheet around a tube-like elastomer actuator, which expands and contracts with air like a balloon.
The researchers built a fully untethered robot, with its integrated onboard control, sensing, actuation and power supply packed into a tiny tail. They tested it crawling throughout Harvard’s campus.
The team experimented with various-shaped cuts, including triangular, circular and trapezoidal. They found that trapezoidal cuts – which most closely resemble the shape of snake scales -gave the robot a longer stride.
News Source: https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2018/02/snake-inspired-robot-uses-kirigami-to-move
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