A Resilient, Untethered Soft Robot

By Michael Thomas Tolley, Robert F. Shepherd, Bobak Mosadegh, Kevin C. Galloway, Michael F. Wehner, Michael Karpelson, Robert J. Wood, George M. Whitesides. 2014

966 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract A pneumatically powered, fully untethered mobile soft robot is described. Composites consisting of silicone elastomer, polyaramid fabric, and hollow glass microspheres were used to fabricate a sufficiently large soft robot to carry the miniature air compressors, battery, valves, and controller needed for autonomous operation. Fabrication techniques were developed to mold a 0.65-meter-long soft body with modified Pneu-Net actuators capable of operating at the elevated pressures (up to 138 kPa) required to actuate the legs of the robot and hold payloads of up to 8 kg. The soft robot is safe to interact with during operation, and its silicone body is innately resilient to a variety of adverse environmental conditions including snow, puddles of water, direct (albeit limited) exposure to flames, and the crushing force of being run over by an automobile.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2b82a8a8403c459896c4b9fe36f716552496f1c4

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In Biomedical Engineering

In Condensed Matter Physics

In Mechanical Engineering

Citations in the corpus

A soft, bistable valve for autonomous control of soft actuators (2018, background): “, solenoid valves) that open or close in response to a pneumatic or electronic signal (8, 9, 18).”
Electronics-free pneumatic circuits for controlling soft-legged robots (2021, background): “, by walking (2, 8, 9, 11), crawling (12), rolling (13), slithering (14), swimming (3, 15, 16), peristaltic digging (17, 18), or jumping (19)] have been primarily controlled by pumps and/or solenoid valves connected to an electronic microcontroller.”
Design, kinematics, and control of a soft spatial fluidic elastomer manipulator (2016, background): “Shepherd et al. (2011) and Tolley et al. (2014) developed walking robots, and Shepherd et al. (2013) developed a jumping robot.”
Soft robotics: Technologies and systems pushing the boundaries of robot abilities (2016, background): “Resilience Quadrupedal robot Pneu-Net (61)”
Design and Analysis of a Soft Pneumatic Actuator with Origami Shell Reinforcement (2016, positive): “Thus, despite the resilience in material used, 8,12,13 robots fabricated with soft materials are highly susceptible to punc-tures and other mechanical failures when inﬂated under harsh conditions, 10 or when subjected to large deformations.”
Untethered soft robotic matter with passive control of shape morphing and propulsion (2019, background): “For example, pneumatically actuated soft robots typically undergo large deformations across their entire structural frame (8, 10).”