Small robot swimmers that heal themselves from damage

Science Daily  March 24, 2021 Swimming robots that can “swim” through fluids and carry out useful functions, such as cleaning up the environment, delivering drugs, are often made of brittle polymers or soft hydrogels, which can easily crack or tear. Researchers at UC San Diego made swimmers that were 2 cm long in the shape of a fish that contained a conductive bottom layer; a rigid, hydrophobic middle layer; and an upper strip of aligned, strongly magnetic microparticles. Platinum in the tail, which reacted with hydrogen peroxide fuel to form oxygen bubbles propelled the robot. In a petri dish filled […]

Efficiency boost for robot submarines

Phys.org  March 8, 2019 Control algorithms for AUVs are not necessarily optimized for distance nor energy consumption. Researchers in China have designed an improved energy-aware and self-adaptive deployment method for a group of AUVs taking on collaborative tasks. Taking into account the movement priority of AUVs and the initial deployment scheme a self-adaptive deployment strategy is presented for redeploying the AUVs when the available energy of some AUVs has fallen below a certain threshold. Simulation results showed that the method decreases energy consumption by about 30%. than its traditional counterpart and it can redeploy AUVs adaptively and rapidly…read more. TECHNICAL […]