Soft Robots Do Pollination! No More Jobs for Birds and Bees

Soft-Robots-Do-Pollination!-No-More-Jobs-for-Birds-and-Bees

MIT's top researchers have designed a tiny robot, weighing less than 1 gram, after getting inspired by the biology of a fly, that can zip around with insect-like agility and resilience. The research team isn't the first to take on the challenge of making tiny flying soft robots. After all, they do have several real-world applications such as using soft robots for the pollination of fields of crops or searching for survivors in disaster areas.

Typically, these kinds of soft robots are made with rigid actuators designed from piezoelectric ceramic materials. The rigid materials make the robot capable to fly, but on the other side, they also make it fragile. These types of tiny flying soft robots are unlikely to survive the number of collisions they would face in the real world. Soft actuators can be much more resilient than rigid ones, but they exhibit a different problem for soft robots. They require higher voltages than rigid actuators, and more voltage means bigger power electronics that the robot is not capable of lifting.

Kevin Chen, an assistant professor in the department of electrical engineering and computer science, and senior author of the study worked with his team to develop a new fabrication technique for soft actuators. The produced actuators function with 75% lower voltage than current versions and can carry 80% more payload. The rectangular robot presented by the team has four sets of wings, each driven by an actuator, that beat nearly 500 times per second. The actuators function like artificial muscles and are made up of layers of elastomer placed between two very thin electrodes and rolled into a squishy cylinder.

The wings flap by applying a voltage to the actuator, which helps the electrodes squeeze the elastomer.