TY - JOUR
T1 - A bioinspired multilegged soft millirobot that functions in both dry and wet conditions
AU - Lu, Haojian
AU - Zhang, Mei
AU - Yang, Yuanyuan
AU - Huang, Qiang
AU - Fukuda, Toshio
AU - Wang, Zuankai
AU - Shen, Yajing
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by Shenzhen (China) Basic Research Project (No. JCYJ20160329150236426), Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (No. C1018-17G, No. 11218417), and National Science Foundation of China (No. 61773326).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - Developing untethered millirobots that can adapt to harsh environments with high locomotion efficiency is of interest for emerging applications in various industrial and biomedical settings. Despite recent success in exploiting soft materials to impart sophisticated functions which are not available in conventional rigid robotics, it remains challenging to achieve superior performances in both wet and dry conditions. Inspired by the flexible, soft, and elastic leg/foot structures of many living organisms, here we report an untethered soft millirobot decorated with multiple tapered soft feet architecture. Such robot design yields superior adaptivity to various harsh environments with ultrafast locomotion speed (>40 limb length/s), ultra-strong carrying capacity (>100 own weight), and excellent obstacle-crossing ability (stand up 90° and across obstacle >10 body height). Our work represents an important advance in the emerging area of bio-inspired robotics and will find a wide spectrum of applications.
AB - Developing untethered millirobots that can adapt to harsh environments with high locomotion efficiency is of interest for emerging applications in various industrial and biomedical settings. Despite recent success in exploiting soft materials to impart sophisticated functions which are not available in conventional rigid robotics, it remains challenging to achieve superior performances in both wet and dry conditions. Inspired by the flexible, soft, and elastic leg/foot structures of many living organisms, here we report an untethered soft millirobot decorated with multiple tapered soft feet architecture. Such robot design yields superior adaptivity to various harsh environments with ultrafast locomotion speed (>40 limb length/s), ultra-strong carrying capacity (>100 own weight), and excellent obstacle-crossing ability (stand up 90° and across obstacle >10 body height). Our work represents an important advance in the emerging area of bio-inspired robotics and will find a wide spectrum of applications.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85054056387&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-018-06491-9
DO - 10.1038/s41467-018-06491-9
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 30258072
AN - SCOPUS:85054056387
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 9
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 3944
ER -