Self-propelled shape-changing robots mimic aquatic insects for untethered swimming

Nanowerk  October 8, 2024
Despite recent advances in the field of small-scale robots, the development of efficient, untethered, and integrated powering, actuation, and control of small-scale robots remains a challenge due to the out-of-equilibrium and dissipative nature of the driving physical and chemical phenomena. An international team of researchers (USA – University of Michigan, Canada) designed small-scale, bioinspired aquatic locomotors with programmable deterministic trajectories that integrated self-propelled chemical motors and photoresponsive shape-morphing structures. They developed robots integrating structural protein networks that self-regulated the release of chemical fuel with photochemical liquid crystal network (LCN) actuators that changed their shape and deformed in and out of the surface of water. While the diffusion of fuel from the motor system regulated the propulsion, the dissipative photochemical deformation of LCNs provided locomotors with control over the directionality of motion at the air-water interface. This approach gave access to five different but interchangeable modes of locomotion within a single swimming robot via morphing of the soft structure. According to the researchers their design offers solutions for autonomous swimming soft robots via untethered and orthogonal power and control… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE

Bioinspired design of a self-propelled shape-morphing swimming robot… Credit: Advanced Functional Materials, 01 October 2024

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