2024-01-22 14:43:27
Washington State University unveiled two insect-like robots, claiming they are the smallest, lightest and fastest fully functional micro-robots ever created.
These miniature robots – a hemipteran and a strider – can be used to work in areas such as artificial pollination, search and rescue, environmental monitoring, microfabrication or robot-assisted surgery.
Reporting their work at the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, the hemipteran weighs eight milligrams, while the water strider weighs 55 milligrams. Both can move at about six millimeters per second.
“It is fast compared to other microrobots at this scale, although it is still behind its biological relatives,” Conor Trygstad, a doctoral student in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and lead author of the work, said in a statement. An ant typically weighs up to five milligrams and can move at almost one meter per second.
The key to small robots is their small actuators that make the robots move. Trygstad used a new manufacturing technique to miniaturize the actuator to less than a milligram, the smallest ever manufactured.
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“The actuators are the smallest and fastest ever developed for microrobotics,” said Néstor O. Pérez-Arancibia, associate professor of engineering in WSU’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, who led the project.
The actuator uses a material called shape memory alloy that can change shape when heated. It is called “shape memory” because it remembers and then returns to its original shape. Unlike a typical motor that would drive a robot, these alloys have no moving parts or rotating components.
“They are very solid mechanically,” Trygstad said. “The development of a very light actuator opens new horizons in microrobotics.”
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Shape memory alloys are generally not used for large-scale robotic movements because they are too slow. However, in the case of the WSU robots, the actuators are made of two small shape memory alloy wires that are 1/1000th of an inch in diameter. With a small amount of current, the cables can be easily heated and cooled, allowing the robots to flap their fins or move their feet up to 40 times per second. In preliminary tests, the actuator was also able to lift more than 150 times its own weight.
Compared to other technologies used to make robots move, SMA technology also requires only a very small amount of electricity or heat to make them move. “The SMA system requires much less sophisticated systems to operate,” Trygstad said.
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Trygstad, a fly-fishing enthusiast, has long observed mosquitoes and would like to study their movements further. While WSU’s water strider robot performs a flat flapping motion to move, the natural insect performs a more efficient paddling motion with its legs, which is one of the reasons the real thing can move much faster.
Researchers would like to copy another insect and develop a strider-like robot that can move both above and just below the surface of water. They are also working to use tiny batteries or catalytic combustion to make their robots completely autonomous and not connected to a power source.
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