Designing minimal and scalable insect-inspired multi-locomotion millirobots
| Autor: | Kazuaki Mori, Koh Hosoda, Zhenishbek Zhakypov, Jamie Paik |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: |
0209 industrial biotechnology
Traverse Multi-locomotion Computer science Distributed computing Movement 02 engineering and technology Crawling medicine.disease_cause 020901 industrial engineering & automation Jumping Collective robots Biomimetics medicine Animals Gait Origami robots Flexibility (engineering) Multidisciplinary Ants Robotics Ant colony 021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology Scalability Meso-scale robots Robot Bio-inspiration 0210 nano-technology Locomotion |
| Zdroj: | Nature. 571(7765) |
| ISSN: | 1476-4687 |
| Popis: | In ant colonies, collectivity enables division of labour and resources1-3 with great scalability. Beyond their intricate social behaviours, individuals of the genus Odontomachus4, also known as trap-jaw ants, have developed remarkable multi-locomotion mechanisms to 'escape-jump' upwards when threatened, using the sudden snapping of their mandibles5, and to negotiate obstacles by leaping forwards using their legs6. Emulating such diverse insect biomechanics and studying collective behaviours in a variety of environments may lead to the development of multi-locomotion robotic collectives deployable in situations such as emergency relief, exploration and monitoring7; however, reproducing these abilities in small-scale robotic systems with simple design and scalability remains a key challenge. Existing robotic collectives8-12 are confined to two-dimensional surfaces owing to limited locomotion, and individual multi-locomotion robots13-17 are difficult to scale up to large groups owing to the increased complexity, size and cost of hardware designs, which hinder mass production. Here we demonstrate an autonomous multi-locomotion insect-scale robot (millirobot) inspired by trap-jaw ants that addresses the design and scalability challenges of small-scale terrestrial robots. The robot's compact locomotion mechanism is constructed with minimal components and assembly steps, has tunable power requirements, and realizes five distinct gaits: vertical jumping for height, horizontal jumping for distance, somersault jumping to clear obstacles, walking on textured terrain and crawling on flat surfaces. The untethered, battery-powered millirobot can selectively switch gaits to traverse diverse terrain types, and groups of millirobots can operate collectively to manipulate objects and overcome obstacles. We constructed the ten-gram palm-sized prototype-the smallest and lightest self-contained multi-locomotion robot reported so far-by folding a quasi-two-dimensional metamaterial18 sandwich formed of easily integrated mechanical, material and electronic layers, which will enable assembly-free mass-manufacturing of robots with high task efficiency, flexibility and disposability. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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