Science Daily September 21, 2022 An international team of researchers (UK, Germany, USA – University of Pennsylvania, Switzerland) introduced aerial additive manufacturing (Aerial-AM) that utilizes a team of aerial robots inspired by natural builders such as wasps. They developed a scalable multi-robot 3D printing and path-planning framework that enabled robot tasks and population size to be adapted to variations in print geometry throughout a building mission. To validate Aerial-AM they developed BuilDrones for depositing materials during flight and ScanDrones for measuring the print quality and integrated a generic real-time model-predictive-control scheme with the Aerial-AM robots. The manufacturing accuracy was five […]
Tag Archives: Microbots
Robot ‘bugs’ that can go just about anywhere
Science Daily March 3, 2022 For many creatures under a certain size—like trap-jaw ants, mantis shrimp, and fleas—jumping across a surface is more energy-efficient than crawling. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh built a robot about the size of a cricket made of a polymeric artificial muscle and replicated such movements. The curved composite shape of the polymer muscle allows it to build energy when it is powered to move along moving surfaces like sand as easily as hard surfaces, and even to hop across water. High speed imaging reveals tip velocities of several 100 mm s−1 with powers approaching […]
Bacteria-sized robots take on microplastics and win by breaking them down
EurekAlert June 9, 2021 Currently sunlight-driven photocatalysis is the most energy-efficient strategy for plastic degradation; however, attaining efficient photocatalyst–plastic interaction and thus an effective charge transfer in the micro/nanoscale is very difficult. As a proof of concept a team of researchers in the Czech Republic introduced an active photocatalytic degradation procedure based on intelligent visible-light-driven microrobots with the capability of capturing and degrading microplastics “on-the-fly” in a complex multichannel maze. The robots with hybrid powers carry built-in photocatalytic (BiVO4) and magnetic (Fe3O4) materials allowing a self-propelled motion under sunlight with the possibility of precise actuation under a magnetic field inside […]
An insect-inspired drone deforms upon impact
Science Daily July 26, 2018 An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Japan) has developed an origami structure which consists of a prestretched elastomeric membrane, akin to the soft resilin joints of insect wings, sandwiched between rigid tiles, akin to the rigid cuticles of insect wings. The dual-stiffness properties of the structure are validated by using the origami as an element of a quadcopter frame that can withstand aerodynamic forces within its flight envelope but softens during collisions to avoid permanent damage… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE