Science Daily March 14, 2023
A team of researcers in the USA (Carnegie Mellon University, UCLA) has developed a multimodal soft robot locomotion using highly compact and dynamic bistable soft actuators. The actuators are composed of a prestretched membrane sandwiched between two 3D printed frames with embedded shape memory alloy (SMA) coils. The actuator can swiftly transform between two oppositely curved states and generate a force through a snap-through instability that is triggered after 0.2 s of electrical activation with an electrical energy input power. The consistency and robustness of the snap-through actuator response was experimentally validated through cyclical testing. The compact and fast-responding properties of the soft bistable actuator allowed it to be used as an artificial muscle for shape-reconfigurable soft robots capable of multiple modes of SMA-powered locomotion. They demonstrated this by creating three soft robots, including a reconfigurable amphibious robot that could walk on land and swim in water, a jumping robot (multimodal crawler) that could crawl and jump, and a caterpillar-inspired rolling robot that could crawl and roll…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Schematic view of bistable actuator… Credit: Advanced Materials Technologies, Volume 8, Issue 2, 2201259, 18 November 2022Â