A research team led by Zhong Junwen, assistant professor in the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST) of the University of Macau (UM) and a member of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics of UM, has developed ‘ultrahigh agility’ robotic insects with good trajectory control, a UM statement said yesterday.
According to the statement, in nature, animals that are fast and agile often have a survival advantage. The statement underlined that a key challenge in this study was to develop insect-scale soft robots with an ultrahigh agility and good trajectory control comparable to those of real agile insects, and the technical difficulty lay in achieving a fast linear moving speed while maintaining the capability of the robots to make turns. The statement said that Zhong’s team emulated similar schemes by adjusting the electrostatic force between the robot’s feet and the ground to achieve both ultrahigh agility and a controlled trajectory.
The statement noted that the soft robots developed by the team can reach a highest relative centripetal acceleration of 28 body-length/s2, which is better than that of common insects. Through a series of demonstrations, the team has proved that the soft robots can pass through a 120cm-long track in a maze within 5.6 seconds and carry a 180mg on-board sensor to record a gas concentration route map.
The statement said that the team has also developed an untethered version of the soft robot, which is battery-powered and can complete a 27.9cm-long S-shape path in 36.9 seconds.
The statement pointed out that the important potential application for such robots is that after a disaster such as an earthquake, a large number of these robots can carry sensors that can move swiftly through the rubble and record and transmit valuable information during the search and rescue process.
According to the statement, a paper about the robots is titled ‘Electrostatic Footpads Enable Agile Insect-scale Soft Robots with Trajectory Control’, which is the result of collaboration between UM, Tsinghua University, and the University of California, Berkeley.
This undated handout photo provided by University of Macau (UM) yesterday shows the robotic insect and compares it to a real ant.
