Magnetically Driven Soft Robot Performs High-Speed ​​Jumps

Many animal species, from insects to amphibians to fish, use jumping as a means of moving around their environment. Jumping can be very advantageous for these animals, allowing them to, for example, reach the highest branches of trees, quickly escape predators, or move more quickly over long distances.

Many roboticists are trying to develop robots that can replicate the jumping locomotion styles seen in animals, because these robots could have interesting real-world applications. By jumping, robots could move more quickly over complex terrain and access surfaces or environments that they otherwise could not reach.

Jumping robots introduced in recent years use a variety of actuation methods, ranging from dielectric elastomers to liquid crystal elastomers to soft actuators. While some of these robots have shown promising results, most of them have proven inferior to living organisms, which are very capable jumpers, both in terms of jumping height and speed.

Researchers at Zhejiang University in China have recently developed a new ultra-fast, magnetically driven, bi-stable soft jumper that has demonstrated advanced jumping capabilities. The jumper, presented in a paper published in Scientific roboticshas proven capable of achieving different styles of jumping locomotion, jumping higher and faster than comparable robotic systems introduced in the past.

Soft jumpers, such as the system developed by these researchers, are based on elastic and deformable materials that often have greater resistance to impacts, thus avoiding damage to the robot during the jump. However, many existing jumpers based on soft materials have proven to be limited in terms of speed of response to stimuli and take-off from the ground.

“We present an ultra-fast magnetically driven bistable soft hopping robot that exhibits good jumping ability (jumping over 108 body heights with a take-off speed of over 2 meters per second) and fast response time (less than 15 milliseconds) compared with previous soft hopping robots,” Daofan Tang, Chengqian Zhang, and colleagues wrote in their paper. “The rapid transitions between bistable states form a repeatable loop that exploits the ultra-fast release of stored elastic energy.”

The researchers created prototypes of their jumpers in different sizes and found that the smaller jumpers were more affected by air resistance, so they couldn’t jump as high as the larger ones. However, the jumpers’ takeoff speeds remained similar regardless of their size.

Notably, the jumper designed by this research team can perform two different types of locomotion, namely jumping and bounding. The researchers conducted real-world tests to demonstrate the benefits of these locomotion modes.

“These modes are controlled by adjusting the duration and strength of the magnetic field, which endows the bi-stable soft jumper with robust locomotion capabilities,” Tang, Zhang, and colleagues wrote. “In addition, it is capable of omnidirectional jumping with adjustable heights and distances. To demonstrate its capabilities in complex environments, a realistic pipeline with amphibious terrain was established.”

The researchers tested their jumper in a simple locomotion task that involved jumping through a narrow tube, jumping through a U-shaped pipeline, and jumping from the water to above the water level. This task was designed to simulate a scenario in which the robot might be used to clean water inside a pipeline.

In this first experiment, the mechanically driven rider performed remarkably well. In the future, its underlying design could inspire the development of other flexible robotic systems for a wide range of real-world applications.

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