Researchers develop soft robot that shifts from land to sea with ease

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. […]