Columbia University researchers have created a bizarre untethered soft robot that moves using hair clip technology, or in other words, transitioning between two states without using much energy. The design resembles a hair clip in that a piece of semi-rigid, flexible plastic is bent so that the two open ends are close to one another before being fastened together.
When a small electric servo motor applies force to the strip of plastic, it transitions from one state to the other, thus allowing its frame to serve as a form of propulsion. This makes the soft robot quite simple mechanically and very cost efficient. The researchers also used this same technology to create a robotic fish that was able to swim at 2.0 body lengths per second.
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The influence of factors including actuation frequency, substrates, tethering/untethering, and symmetric/asymmetric actuation is explored with experiments. Based on previous work, this paper further demonstrated the potential of HCM in addressing the speed problem of soft robots,” said the researchers.
