articleScience RoboticsJul 17, 2019Closed access

Insect-scale fast moving and ultrarobust soft robot

Tsinghua–Berkeley Shenzhen Institute · University of California, Berkeley · +3 more institutions

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Abstract

Mobility and robustness are two important features for practical applications of robots. Soft robots made of polymeric materials have the potential to achieve both attributes simultaneously. Inspired by nature, this research presents soft robots based on a curved unimorph piezoelectric structure whose relative speed of 20 body lengths per second is the fastest measured among published artificial insect-scale robots. The soft robot uses several principles of animal locomotion, can carry loads, climb slopes, and has the sturdiness of cockroaches. After withstanding the weight of an adult footstep, which is about 1 million times heavier than that of the robot, the system survived and continued to move afterward.…

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