Power Autonomy and Agility Control of an Untethered Insect-Scale Soft Robot

Miao, Zicong; Liang, J. Nellie; Chen, Huimin; Lu, Jiangfeng; Sun, Xiang; Liu, Ying; Tang, Fu; Zhang, Min

doi:10.1089/soro.2021.0201

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 42 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Figure 5f presents the comparison of the relative moving speed with respect to the body mass for several terrestrial mammals [24][25][26] (blue triangles), insects 2,3,27-32 (orange circles), reported untethered robots [8][9][10]16,17,22,23,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] (purple diamonds), and the BHMbot (red pentagram). Detailed data for comparison is provided in Supplementary Table 10.…”

Section: Untethered Locomotion Performance Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To fulfill this goal, a variety of insect-scale legged microrobots have been proposed by roboticists and demonstrate satisfactory tethered locomotion performance using external power sources and control electronics [4][5][6] . However, the tethered movements are highly restricted in confined space and real application scenarios often require high untethered mobility of the microrobot with an onboard power source, control units, and task loads [7][8][9][10] .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A wireless controlled robotic insect with ultrafast untethered running speeds

Liu,

Zhan,

Liu

et al. 2024

Nat Commun

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Running speed degradation of insect-scale (less than 5 cm) legged microrobots after carrying payloads has become a bottleneck for microrobots to achieve high untethered locomotion performance. In this work, we present a 2-cm legged microrobot (BHMbot, BeiHang Microrobot) with ultrafast untethered running speeds, which is facilitated by the complementary combination of bouncing length and bouncing frequency in the microrobot’s running gait. The untethered BHMbot (2-cm-long, 1760 mg) can achieve a running speed of 17.5 BL s−1 and a turning centripetal acceleration of 65.4 BL s−2 at a Cost of Transport of 303.7 and a power consumption of 1.77 W. By controlling its two front legs independently, the BHMbot demonstrates various locomotion trajectories including circles, rectangles, letters and irregular paths across obstacles through a wireless control module. Such advancements enable the BHMbot to carry out application attempts including sound signal detection, locomotion inside a turbofan engine and transportation via a quadrotor.

show abstract

Section: Untethered Locomotion Performance Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A wireless controlled robotic insect with ultrafast untethered running speeds

Liu,

Zhan,

Liu

et al. 2024

Nat Commun

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Therefore, there is a need to integrate both actuation and its control components onboard the compliant robotic body.To address this challenge, researchers have explored integrating small-scale electronic control boards with piezoelectric actuators to achieve precisely controlled and fast locomotion. [16] While piezoelectric actuators offer a high-frequency response [17] and can be powered by a compact energy supply, [18] they can only generate a small strain, making them less suitable for large-scale robots. More importantly, using rigid electronic control boards is not ideal for soft robots.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Self‐Sustained and Coordinated Rhythmic Deformations with SMA for Controller‐Free Locomotion

Zhou,

2024

Advanced Intelligent Systems

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study presents a modular, electronics‐free, and fully onboard control and actuation approach for shape memory alloy (SMA)‐based soft robots to achieve locomotion tasks. This approach exploits the nonlinear mechanics of compliant curved beams and carefully designed mechanical control circuits to create and synchronize rhythmic deformation cycles, mimicking the central pattern generators prevalent in animal locomotions. More specifically, the study elucidates a new strategy to amplify the actuation performance of the shape memory coil actuator by coupling it to a carefully designed, monostable curve beam with a snap‐through buckling behavior. Such SMA‐curved beam assembly is integrated with an entirely mechanical circuit featuring a slider mechanism. This circuit can automatically cut off and supply current to the SMA according to its deformation status, generating a self‐sustained rhythmic deformation cycle using a simple DC power supply. Finally, this study presents a new strategy to coordinate (synchronize) two rhythmic deformation cycles from two robotic modules to achieve efficient crawling locomotion but still use a single DC power. This work represents a significant step toward fully autonomous, electronics‐free SMA‐based locomotion robots with fully onboard actuation and control.

show abstract