For plants, cleaning the air, providing food and medicines, and preserving our ecosystem is just another day’s work. In the <a href="https://www.meche.engineering.cmu.edu/index.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Department of Mechanical EngineeringOpens in new window</a> at Carnegie Mellon University, however, plants are being studied in new ways to inspire future biohybrid <a href="https://engineering.cmu.edu/softbotics/index.html" target="_blank">Softbotic</a> designs.“Plants are a system much like planes, trains, and automobiles,” explained <a href="https://engineering.cmu.edu/directory/bios/leduc-philip.html" target="_blank">Phil LeDuc</a>, professor of mechanical engineering. “We want to understand plants’ mechanical systems, especially their sensing and signaling behavior, to potentially integrate them into biohybrid systems.”Mimosa pudica, the subject of the study recently published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202404578" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Advanced ScienceOpens in new window</a>, rapidly closes its leaves when exposed to touch, wind, temperature, and various other stimuli. Researchers theorize that this response is potentially an evolutionary advantage to protect against predators.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OHChJURzcHs?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true">&nbsp;</iframe>Alex Naglich, a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering, observed Mimosa pudica’s responses to three different mechanical stimuli to gain a better understanding of its macroscopic behavior. To emulate a predator, Naglich cut a cluster of leaves from the plant and watched as nearby clusters folded together immediately, seemingly in self-defense. When Naglich prodded just one leaf on the plant to create a mild disturbance, like that an insect might cause, only the affected leaf folded. After repeated poking, however, the leaves folded one after another the whole way down the plant. For the final test, Naglich used an air pulse to imitate wind and found that only the leaves directly affected by the pulse of air folded.“When mimosa folds, it’s less efficient for photosynthesis, so it makes sense why it wouldn’t want to stay folded,” Naglich said. “If a light breeze is only hitting a couple of leaves, why hide the entire plant?”While the “intelligent” plant's small size, impressive power density, and high efficiency makes it a promising candidate to act as a biohybrid actuator, Naglich also believes its response system could be the foundation for improved agricultural health monitoring.<blockquote>Plants are one of those complex and sophisticated systems that we need to be studying more.<cite>Phil LeDuc, Professor, Mechanical Engineering</cite></blockquote>“If we can continue to explore this plant’s intelligence, its ability to distinguish against threats and respond accordingly, we could integrate it with electronics to create a biohybrid sensor and place it among crops so that farmers can be notified in real time when there’s a disturbance in the field.”Moving forward, the lab plans to explore how mimosa pudica’s physical structure plays a role in its behavior.“When it comes to biohybrid robotic research, there are a lot of naturally occurring mechanisms that could advance the field, and we just haven’t looked into them yet,” said LeDuc. “Plants are one of those complex and sophisticated systems that we need to be studying more.”

Complex and sophisticated, a plant’s mechanical systems could be the key to more advanced biohybrid softbotic designs.

New moves for self-defense: How plants can inspire future Softbotic design

<section id="isPasted">Texas A&amp;M University is joining a new National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center (ERC), led by Northwestern University, seeking to develop robots capable of enhancing human labor.&nbsp;A central goal of the Human AugmentatioN via Dexterity (HAND) center is to make robotic assistance accessible and applicable to a wide range of physical actions through an engineered system of dexterous robotic hands, AI-powered fine motor skills, human interface, as well as developing the workforce and training for the future.The five-year, $26 million grant also includes Carnegie-Mellon University and Florida A&amp;M University, with faculty support from Syracuse University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The center’s NSF grant has the potential to be renewed for another $26 million for an additional five years. Founded in 1985, the NSF ERC program supports U.S. universities conducting convergent research, education and technology translation aimed at creating substantial societal impacts.&nbsp;“We are excited to be a part of this groundbreaking initiative that will redefine the future of work and push the boundaries of technology to make a tangible impact,” said Dr. Robert H. Bishop, vice chancellor and dean for Texas A&amp;M Engineering. “At Texas A&amp;M, we believe in harnessing innovation to solve pressing problems and improve lives.”</section><blockquote>We are excited to be a part of this groundbreaking initiative that will redefine the future of work and push the boundaries of technology to make a tangible impact. At Texas A&amp;M, we believe in harnessing innovation to solve pressing problems and improve lives.<cite>- Dr. Robert H. Bishop</cite></blockquote><section>Dr. Cynthia Hipwell, Oscar S. Wyatt, Jr. ’45 Chair II Professor in the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, will serve as a deputy director for the HAND center.&nbsp;Hipwell said that current robotic tools typically require specialized expertise and an expensive integration process and thus are limited to high-volume, highly repeatable operations. The center’s approach in creating robotics that adaptably perform many different tasks and are easy for workers to use could provide affordable support to address labor shortages in manufacturing and caregiving, as well as food processing, handling precious or dangerous materials and more.“Our vision is that it will be like the transition from mainframe computers used by specialized programmers to the arrival of the Apple Macintosh or PC [personal computer] as a tool that everybody could use,” said Hipwell. “We have many small and medium enterprises around our country that haven't been able to benefit from automation technology. We want to create something that workers can use as a tool to complete their work. That's really our vision — democratizing access to robotics.”To achieve the goal of providing a practical and easily accessible tool, researchers have divided their work into three main areas:<ul><li>Hands: sensing, actuation, and design</li><li>Intelligent dexterity: simulation, representation, and control</li><li>Human interface: multimodal interface, no-code programming, and social/legal/industrial studies</li></ul>The center will also develop workforce training materials and an intuitive training interface enabling human operators of all education levels to teach the robots how to perform their necessary tasks.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1725498968571-News-COE-ActualRobotHands-23August2024.jpg" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">An early prototype of robotic hands soldering. | Image:&nbsp;<cite id="isPasted">Courtesy of Dr. Cynthia Hipwell</cite>“The idea is that these tools could be something that any of us could use,” said Hipwell. “This could be something that could help a worker with physical work, or it could help someone stay in their home longer because they have physical assistance with some of their tasks. It could even be brought into areas where the work is dangerous and offer a way to help someone do physical work less dangerously.”The HAND center brings together experts in various fields, including materials, manufacturing, manipulation, soft robotics, artificial intelligence, machine perception, modeling, haptics, human-robot interaction, participatory design and research, team science, education, law and the social sciences.“To make a breakthrough in this area, you can't just move one aspect of it forward — just actuators or just control algorithms or just interface mechanisms. I think making a breakthrough requires this coordinated system approach,” said Hipwell. “We have the opportunity with this system-focused effort to make a much larger impact than we would as individual researchers working alone.”<hr>In addition to Hipwell, several Texas A&amp;M researchers will contribute to the center’s focus areas. <a href="https://cte.tamu.edu/who-we-are/our-team/debra-fowler" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Dr. Debra Fowler</a>, executive director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, will lead overall workforce development programs for the center, leading the creation of programs of study for future leaders in the field and programs for technicians, workers, and K-12 and community college outreach. <a href="https://engineering.tamu.edu/mechanical/profiles/ambrose-robert.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Dr. Robert Ambrose</a> will lead the High Consequence Materials Handling Testbed, which will help the center partner with collaborators such as NASA and Los Alamos National Laboratory on specific applications of HAND technology. Drs. <a href="https://engineering.tamu.edu/mechanical/profiles/friesen-rebecca.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Rebecca Friesen</a> and <a href="https://engineering.tamu.edu/biomedical/profiles/ware-taylor.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Taylor Ware</a> will contribute to the human interface and hands research areas, and<a href="https://engineering.tamu.edu/etid/profiles/gharib-mohamed.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">&nbsp;Dr. Mohamed Gharib</a> will lead unique K-12 and community college outreach programs.</section>

Image: Rachel Barton/Texas A&M Engineering

Texas A&M University joins a Northwestern University-led Engineering Research Center to bring highly skilled, affordable robotic assistance to the workforce and beyond.

Researchers Team Up to Advance Robotic Dexterity

Robots and food have long been distant worlds: Robots are inorganic, bulky, and non-disposable; food is organic, soft, and biodegradable. Yet, research that develops edible robots has progressed recently and promises positive impacts: Robotic food could reduce electronic waste, help deliver nutrition and medicines to people and animals in need, monitor health, and even pave the way to novel gastronomical experiences. But how far are we from having a fully edible robot for lunch or dessert? And what are the challenges? Scientists from the RoboFood project, based at EPFL, address these and other questions <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1038/s41578-024-00688-9?utm_source=rct_congratemailt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nonoa_20240528&utm_content=10.1038%2Fs41578-024-00688-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in a new perspective article&nbsp;</a>in the journal Nature Reviews Materials.“Bringing robots and food together is a fascinating challenge,” says Dario Floreano, director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL and first author of the article. In 2021, Floreano joined forces with Remko Boom from Wageningen University, The Netherlands, Jonathan Rossiter from the University of Bristol, UK, and Mario Caironi from the Italian Institute of Technology, to launch the project RoboFood, funded by the EU with € 3.5 Mio. for four years (<a href="http://www.robofood.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.robofood.org</a>).In the perspective article, RoboFood authors analyse which edible ingredients can be used to make edible robot parts and whole robots, and discuss the challenges of making them. “We are still figuring out which edible materials work similarly to non-edible ones,” says Floreano. For example, gelatine can replace rubber, rice cookies are akin to foam, a chocolate film can protect robots in humid environments, and mixing starch and tannin can mimic commercial glues.These and other edible materials make up the ingredients of robotic components. “There is a lot of research on single edible components like actuators, sensors, and batteries,” says Bokeon Kwak, a postdoc in the group of Floreano and one of the authors. In 2017, EPFL scientists successfully produced an edible gripper, a gelatine-made structure that could handle an apple and be eaten afterward [1]. EPFL, IIT, and the University of Bristol recently developed a new conductive ink that can be sprayed on food to sense its growth. The ink contains activated carbon as a conductor, while Haribo gummy bears are used as a binder. Other sensors can perceive pH, light, and bending. In 2023, IIT researchers realized the first rechargeable edible battery using riboflavin (vitamin B2) and quercetin (found in almonds and capers) in the battery poles, adding activated carbon to facilitate electron transport and nori algae, used to wrap sushi, to prevent short circuits. Packaged with beeswax, the 4 cm wide edible battery can operate at 0.65 Volt, still a safe voltage in case of ingestion; two edible batteries connected in series can power a light-emitting diode for about 10 minutes.Once the components are ready, the goal is to produce fully edible robots. To date, scientists have succeeded in assembling partially edible robotic systems. In 2022 researchers from EPFL and the Wageningen University designed a drone with wings out of rice cookies glued with gelatine. Scientists at EPFL and IIT have also created a partially edible rolling robot that uses pneumatic gelatine legs and an edible tilt sensor.Before writing the recipe for fully edible robots, researchers face several challenges. One of them is the lack of understanding of how humans and animals perceive processed food with reactive and autonomous behavior. Also, fully edible electronics that use transistors and process information are still difficult to make. “But the biggest technical challenge is putting together the parts that use electricity to function, like batteries and sensors, with those that use fluids and pressure to move, like actuators,” says Kwak. After integrating all components, scientists need to miniaturise them, increase the shelf life of robotic food… and give robots a pleasant taste.<hr><h3>References</h3>Floreano, D., Kwak, B., Pankhurst, M. et al. Towards edible robots and robotic food. Nat Rev Mater (2024). <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-024-00688-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-024-00688-9</a>

A fully edible robot could soon end up on our plate if we overcome some technical hurdles, say EPFL scientists involved in RoboFood – an EU-funded project which aims to marry robots and food.

Robots au chocolat for dessert?

Pneumatic actuators convert compressed air into mechanical motion, enabling precise and efficient control in various industrial applications.

What are Pneumatic Actuators? Principles, Types, and Applications

Imagine a slime-like robot that can seamlessly change its shape to squeeze through narrow spaces, which could be deployed inside the human body to remove an unwanted item.While such a robot does not yet exist outside a laboratory, researchers are working to develop reconfigurable soft robots for applications in health care, wearable devices, and industrial systems.But how can one control a squishy robot that doesn’t have joints, limbs, or fingers that can be manipulated, and instead can drastically alter its entire shape at will? MIT researchers are working to answer that question.They developed a control algorithm that can autonomously learn how to move, stretch, and shape a reconfigurable robot to complete a specific task, even when that task requires the robot to change its morphology multiple times. The team also built a simulator to test control algorithms for deformable soft robots on a series of challenging, shape-changing tasks.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IieJM8wYUKo?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe>Their method completed each of the eight tasks they evaluated while outperforming other algorithms. The technique worked especially well on multifaceted tasks. For instance, in one test, the robot had to reduce its height while growing two tiny legs to squeeze through a narrow pipe, and then un-grow those legs and extend its torso to open the pipe’s lid.While reconfigurable soft robots are still in their infancy, such a technique could someday enable general-purpose robots that can adapt their shapes to accomplish diverse tasks.“When people think about soft robots, they tend to think about robots that are elastic, but return to their original shape. Our robot is like slime and can actually change its morphology. It is very striking that our method worked so well because we are dealing with something very new,” says Boyuan Chen, an electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) graduate student and co-author of a <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.13231" target="_blank">paper on this approach</a>.Chen’s co-authors include lead author Suning Huang, an undergraduate student at Tsinghua University in China who completed this work while a visiting student at MIT; Huazhe Xu, an assistant professor at Tsinghua University; and senior author Vincent Sitzmann, an assistant professor of EECS at MIT who leads the Scene Representation Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations.<h2>Controlling dynamic motion</h2>Scientists often teach robots to complete tasks using a machine-learning approach known as reinforcement learning, which is a trial-and-error process in which the robot is rewarded for actions that move it closer to a goal.This can be effective when the robot’s moving parts are consistent and well-defined, like a gripper with three fingers. With a robotic gripper, a reinforcement learning algorithm might move one finger slightly, learning by trial and error whether that motion earns it a reward. Then it would move on to the next finger, and so on.But shape-shifting robots, which are controlled by magnetic fields, can dynamically squish, bend, or elongate their entire bodies.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1715580226145-Ditto-gym-1.gif" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The researchers built a simulator to test control algorithms for deformable soft robots on a series of challenging, shape-changing tasks. Here, a reconfigurable robot learns to elongate and curve its soft body to weave around obstacles and reach a target. Image: Courtesy of the researchers“Such a robot could have thousands of small pieces of muscle to control, so it is very hard to learn in a traditional way,” says Chen.To solve this problem, he and his collaborators had to think about it differently. Rather than moving each tiny muscle individually, their reinforcement learning algorithm begins by learning to control groups of adjacent muscles that work together.Then, after the algorithm has explored the space of possible actions by focusing on groups of muscles, it drills down into finer detail to optimize the policy, or action plan, it has learned. In this way, the control algorithm follows a coarse-to-fine methodology.“Coarse-to-fine means that when you take a random action, that random action is likely to make a difference. The change in the outcome is likely very significant because you coarsely control several muscles at the same time,” Sitzmann says.To enable this, the researchers treat a robot’s action space, or how it can move in a certain area, like an image.Their machine-learning model uses images of the robot’s environment to generate a 2D action space, which includes the robot and the area around it. They simulate robot motion using what is known as the material-point-method, where the action space is covered by points, like image pixels, and overlayed with a grid.The same way nearby pixels in an image are related (like the pixels that form a tree in a photo), they built their algorithm to understand that nearby action points have stronger correlations. Points around the robot’s “shoulder” will move similarly when it changes shape, while points on the robot’s “leg” will also move similarly, but in a different way than those on the “shoulder.”In addition, the researchers use the same machine-learning model to look at the environment and predict the actions the robot should take, which makes it more efficient.<h2>Building a simulator</h2>After developing this approach, the researchers needed a way to test it, so they created a simulation environment called DittoGym.DittoGym features eight tasks that evaluate a reconfigurable robot’s ability to dynamically change shape. In one, the robot must elongate and curve its body so it can weave around obstacles to reach a target point. In another, it must change its shape to mimic letters of the alphabet.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1715580352121-ezgif-1-783e5d8fbe.gif" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">In this simulation, the reconfigurable soft robot, trained using the researchers' control algorithm, must change its shape to mimic objects, like stars, and the letters M-I-T. Image: Courtesy of the researchers“Our task selection in DittoGym follows both generic reinforcement learning benchmark design principles and the specific needs of reconfigurable robots. Each task is designed to represent certain properties that we deem important, such as the capability to navigate through long-horizon explorations, the ability to analyze the environment, and interact with external objects,” Huang says. “We believe they together can give users a comprehensive understanding of the flexibility of reconfigurable robots and the effectiveness of our reinforcement learning scheme.”Their algorithm outperformed baseline methods and was the only technique suitable for completing multistage tasks that required several shape changes.“We have a stronger correlation between action points that are closer to each other, and I think that is key to making this work so well,” says Chen.While it may be many years before shape-shifting robots are deployed in the real world, Chen and his collaborators hope their work inspires other scientists not only to study reconfigurable soft robots but also to think about leveraging 2D action spaces for other complex control problems.

A new machine-learning technique can train and control a reconfigurable soft robot that can dynamically change its shape to complete a task. The researchers, from MIT and elsewhere, also built a simulator that can evaluate control algorithms for shape-shifting soft robots. Image: Courtesy of the researchers; MIT News

A new algorithm learns to squish, bend, or stretch a robot’s entire body to accomplish diverse tasks like avoiding obstacles or retrieving items.

A better way to control shape-shifting soft robots

For engineers working on soft robotics or wearable devices, keeping things light is a constant challenge: heavier materials require more energy to move around, and – in the case of wearables or prostheses – cause discomfort. Elastomers are synthetic polymers that can be manufactured with a range of mechanical properties, from stiff to stretchy, making them a popular material for such applications. But manufacturing elastomers that can be shaped into complex 3D structures that go from rigid to rubbery has been unfeasible until now.“Elastomers are usually cast so that their composition cannot be changed in all three dimensions over short length scales. To overcome this problem, we developed DNGEs: 3D-printable double network granular elastomers that can vary their mechanical properties to an unprecedented degree,” says Esther Amstad, head of the <a href="https://www.epfl.ch/labs/smal/" target="_blank">Soft Materials Laboratory</a> in EPFL’s School of Engineering.Eva Baur, a PhD student in Amstad’s lab, used DNGEs to print a prototype ‘finger’, complete with rigid ‘bones’ surrounded by flexible ‘flesh’. The finger was printed to deform in a pre-defined way, demonstrating the technology’s potential to manufacture devices that are sufficiently supple to bend and stretch, while remaining firm enough to manipulate objects.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1713431737943-2048x1152.jpg" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The lab's DNGE prototype ‘finger’ with rigid ‘bones’ surrounded by flexible ‘flesh’ © Adrian AlberolaWith these advantages, the researchers believe that DNGEs could facilitate the design of soft actuators, sensors, and wearables free of heavy, bulky mechanical joints. The research has been published in the journal <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202313189" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Advanced Materials</a>.<h2>Two elastomeric networks; twice as versatile</h2>The key to the DNGEs’ versatility lies in engineering two elastomeric networks. First, elastomer microparticles are produced from oil-in-water emulsion drops. These microparticles are placed in a precursor solution, where they absorb elastomer compounds and swell up. The swollen microparticles are then used to make a 3D printable ink, which is loaded into a bioprinter to create a desired structure. The precursor is polymerized within the 3D-printed structure, creating a second elastomeric network that rigidifies the entire object.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1713431770492-3840x2159+%281%29.jpg" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Example of DNGEs (3D-printable double network granular elastomers) © Titouan VeuilletWhile the composition of the first network determines the structure’s stiffness, the second determines its fracture toughness, meaning that the two networks can be fine-tuned independently to achieve a combination of stiffness, toughness, and fatigue resistance. The use of elastomers over hydrogels – the material used in state-of-the-art approaches – has the added advantage of creating structures that are water-free, making them more stable over time. To top it off, DNGEs can be printed using commercially available 3D printers.“The beauty of our approach is that anyone with a standard bioprinter can use it,” Amstad emphasizes.One exciting potential application of DNGEs is in devices for motion-guided rehabilitation, where the ability to support movement in one direction while restricting it in another could be highly useful. Further development of DNGE technology could result in prosthetics, or even motion guides to assist surgeons. Sensing remote movements, for example in robot-assisted crop harvesting or underwater exploration, is another area of application.Amstad says that the Soft Materials Lab is already working on the next steps toward developing such applications by integrating active elements – such as responsive materials and electrical connections – into DNGE structures.<hr>ReferencesE. Baur, B. Tiberghien, E. Amstad, 3D Printing of Double Network Granular Elastomers with Locally Varying Mechanical Properties. Adv. Mater. 2024, 2313189.&nbsp;<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202313189" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202313189</a>

Example of DNGEs (3D-printable double network granular elastomers) © Titouan Veuillet

EPFL researchers are targeting the next generation of soft actuators and robots with an elastomer-based ink for 3D printing objects with locally changing mechanical properties, eliminating the need for cumbersome mechanical joints.

An ink for 3D-printing flexible devices without mechanical joints

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a programmable metafluid with tunable springiness, optical properties, viscosity and even the ability to transition between a Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluid.&nbsp;The first-of-its-kind metafluid uses a suspension of small, elastomer spheres — between 50 to 500 microns — that buckle under pressure, radically changing the characteristics of the fluid. The metafluid could be used in everything from hydraulic actuators to program robots, to intelligent shock absorbers that can dissipate energy depending on the intensity of the impact, to optical devices that can transition from clear to opaque.The research is published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07163-z" target="_blank">Nature</a>.&nbsp;“We are just scratching the surface of what is possible with this new class of fluid,” said Adel Djellouli, a Research Associate in Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering at SEAS and first author of the paper. “With this one platform, you could do so many different things in so many different fields.”<blockquote>"We are just scratching the surface of what is possible with this new class of fluid. With this one platform, you could do so many different things in so many different fields."ADEL DJELLOULI, RESEARCH ASSOCIATE IN MATERIALS SCIENCE AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERING</blockquote>Metamaterials — artificially engineered materials whose properties are determined by their structure rather than composition — have been widely used in a range of applications for years. But most of the materials — such as the metalenses pioneered in the lab of <a href="https://seas.harvard.edu/person/federico-capasso" target="_blank">Federico Capasso</a>, Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at SEAS — are solid.&nbsp;“Unlike solid metamaterials, metafluids have the unique ability to flow and adapt to the shape of their container,” said <a href="https://seas.harvard.edu/person/katia-bertoldi" target="_blank">Katia Bertoldi</a>, William and Ami Kuan Danoff Professor of Applied Mechanics at SEAS and senior author of the paper. “Our goal was to create a metafluid that not only possesses these remarkable attributes but also provides a platform for programmable viscosity, compressibility and optical properties.”Using a highly scalable fabrication technique developed in the lab of<a href="https://seas.harvard.edu/person/david-weitz" target="_blank">&nbsp;David A. Weitz</a>, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics at SEAS, the research team produced hundreds of thousands of these highly-deformable spherical capsules filled with air and suspended them in silicon oil. When the pressure inside the liquid increases, the capsules collapse, forming a lens-like half sphere. When that pressure is removed, the capsules pop back into their spherical shape.&nbsp;<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1712910643712-ezgif-6-525a83ddd2.gif" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">When pressure is removed from the fluid, the capsules pop back into their spherical shape. (Credit: Adel Djellouli/Harvard SEAS)That transition changes many of the liquid’s properties, including its viscosity and opacity. Those properties can be tuned by changing the number, thickness and size of the capsules in the liquid. &nbsp;The researchers demonstrated the programmability of the liquid by loading the metafluid into a hydraulic robotic gripper and having the gripper pick up a glass bottle, an egg and a blueberry. In a traditional hydraulic system powered by simple air or water, the robot would need some kind of sensing or external control to be able to adjust its grip and pick up all three objects without crushing them.&nbsp;But with the metafluid, no sensing is needed. The liquid itself responds to different pressures, changing its compliance to adjust the force of the gripper to be able to pick up a heavy bottle, a delicate egg and a small blueberry, with no additional programming.&nbsp;“We show that we can use this fluid to endow intelligence into a simple robot,” said Djellouli.The team also demonstrated a fluidic logic gate that can be reprogrammed by changing the metafluid.The metafluid also changes its optical properties when exposed to changing pressures.&nbsp;<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1712910829305-ezgif-6-15470cf979.gif" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Metafluid over the Harvard logo. (Credit: Adel Djellouli/Harvard SEAS)When the capsules are round, they scatter light, making the liquid opaque, much like air bubbles make aerated water appear white. But when pressure is applied and the capsules collapse, they act like microlenses, focusing light and making the liquid transparent. &nbsp;These optical properties could be used for a range of applications, such as e-inks that change color based on pressure.&nbsp;The researchers also showed that when the capsules are spherical, the metafluid behaves like a Newtonian fluid, meaning its viscosity only changes in response to temperature. However, when the capsules are collapsed, the suspension transforms into a non-Newtonian fluid, meaning that its viscosity will change in response to shear &nbsp;force — the greater the shear force, the more fluid it becomes. This is the first metafluid that has been shown to transition between Newtonian and non-Newtonian states.Next, the researchers aim to explore the acoustic and thermodynamic properties of the metafluid.&nbsp;“The application space for these scalable, easy-to-produce metafluids is huge,” said Bertoldi.Harvard’s&nbsp;<a href="https://otd.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Office of Technology Development</a> has protected the intellectual property associated with this research and is exploring commercialization opportunities.The research was supported in part by the NSF through the Harvard University Materials Research Science and Engineering Center grant number DMR-2011754.&nbsp;It was co-authored by Bert Van Raemdonck, Yang Wang, Yi Yang, Anthony Caillaud, David Weitz, Shmuel Rubinstein and Benjamin Gorissen.

Researchers develop metafluid with programmable response

Intelligent liquid

Our muscles are nature’s perfect actuators — devices that turn energy into motion. For their size, muscle fibers are more powerful and precise than most synthetic actuators. They can even heal from damage and grow stronger with exercise.For these reasons, engineers are exploring ways to power robots with natural muscles. They’ve demonstrated a handful of “biohybrid” robots that use muscle-based actuators to power artificial skeletons that walk, swim, pump, and grip. But for every bot, there’s a very different build, and no general blueprint for how to get the most out of muscles for any given robot design.Now, MIT engineers have developed a spring-like device that could be used as a basic skeleton-like module for almost any muscle-bound bot. The new spring, or “flexure,” is designed to get the most work out of any attached muscle tissues. Like a leg press that’s fit with just the right amount of weight, the device maximizes the amount of movement that a muscle can naturally produce.The researchers found that when they fit a ring of muscle tissue onto the device, much like a rubber band stretched around two posts, the muscle pulled on the spring, reliably and repeatedly, and stretched it five times more, compared with other previous device designs.The team sees the flexure design as a new building block that can be combined with other flexures to build any configuration of artificial skeletons. Engineers can then fit the skeletons with muscle tissues to power their movements.“These flexures are like a skeleton that people can now use to turn muscle actuation into multiple degrees of freedom of motion in a very predictable way,” says Ritu Raman, the Brit and Alex d'Arbeloff Career Development Professor in Engineering Design at MIT. “We are giving roboticists a new set of rules to make powerful and precise muscle-powered robots that do interesting things.”Raman and her colleagues report the details of the new flexure design in a&nbsp;<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/aisy.202300834" target="_blank">paper appearing today</a> in the journal&nbsp;Advanced Intelligent&nbsp;Systems. The study’s MIT co-authors include Naomi Lynch ’12, SM ’23; undergraduate Tara Sheehan; graduate students Nicolas Castro, Laura Rosado, and Brandon Rios; and professor of mechanical engineering Martin Culpepper.<h2>Muscle pull</h2>When left alone in a petri dish in favorable conditions, muscle tissue will contract on its own but in directions that are not entirely predictable or of much use.“If muscle is not attached to anything, it will move a lot, but with huge variability, where it’s just flailing around in liquid,” Raman says.To get a muscle to work like a mechanical actuator, engineers typically attach a band of muscle tissue between two small, flexible posts. As the muscle band naturally contracts, it can bend the posts and pull them together, producing some movement that would ideally power part of a robotic skeleton. But in these designs, muscles have produced limited movement, mainly because the tissues are so variable in how they contact the posts. Depending on where the muscles are placed on the posts, and how much of the muscle surface is touching the post, the muscles may succeed in pulling the posts together but at other times may wobble around in uncontrollable ways.Raman’s group looked to design a skeleton that focuses and maximizes a muscle’s contractions regardless of exactly where and how it is placed on a skeleton, to generate the most movement in a predictable, reliable way.“The question is: How do we design a skeleton that most efficiently uses the force the muscle&nbsp;is generating?” Raman says.The researchers first considered the multiple directions that a muscle can naturally move. They reasoned that if a muscle is to pull two posts together along a specific direction, the posts should be connected to a spring that only allows them to move in that direction when pulled.“We need a device that is very soft and flexible in one direction, and very stiff in all other directions, so that when a muscle contracts, all that force gets efficiently converted into motion in one direction,” Raman says.<h2>Soft flex</h2>As it turns out, Raman found many such devices in Professor Martin Culpepper’s lab. Culpepper’s group at MIT specializes in the design and fabrication of machine elements such as miniature actuators, bearings, and other mechanisms, that can be built into machines and systems to enable ultraprecise movement, measurement, and control, for a wide variety of applications. Among the group’s precision machined elements are flexures — spring-like devices, often made from parallel beams, that can flex and stretch with nanometer precision.“Depending on how thin and far apart the beams are, you can change how stiff the spring appears to be,” Raman says.She and Culpepper teamed up to design a flexure specifically tailored with a configuration and stiffness to enable muscle tissue to naturally contract and maximally stretch the spring. The team designed the device’s configuration and dimensions based on numerous calculations they carried out to relate a muscle’s natural forces with a flexure’s stiffness and degree of movement.The flexure they ultimately designed is 1/100 the stiffness of muscle tissue itself. The device resembles a miniature, accordion-like structure, the corners of which are pinned to an underlying base by a small post, which sits near a neighboring post that is fit directly onto the base. Raman then wrapped a band of muscle around the two corner posts (the team molded the bands from live muscle fibers that they grew from mouse cells), and measured how close the posts were pulled together as the muscle band contracted.The team found that the flexure’s configuration enabled the muscle band to contract mostly along the direction between the two posts. This focused contraction allowed the muscle to pull the posts much closer together — five times closer — compared with previous muscle actuator designs.“The flexure is a skeleton that we designed to be very soft and flexible in one direction, and very stiff in all other directions,” Raman says. “When the muscle contracts, all the force is converted into movement in that direction. It’s a huge magnification.”The team found they could use the device to precisely measure muscle performance and endurance. When they varied the frequency of muscle contractions (for instance, stimulating the bands to contract once versus four times per second), they observed that the muscles “grew tired” at higher frequencies, and didn’t generate as much pull.“Looking at how quickly our muscles get tired, and how we can exercise them to have high-endurance responses — this is what we can uncover with this platform,” Raman says.The researchers are now adapting and combining flexures to build precise, articulated, and reliable robots, powered by natural muscles.“An example of a robot we are trying to build in the future is a surgical robot that can perform minimally invasive procedures inside the body,” Raman says. “Technically, muscles can power robots of any size, but we are particularly excited in making small robots, as this is where biological actuators excel in terms of strength, efficiency, and adaptability.”

MIT engineers have developed a new spring (shown in Petri dish) that maximizes the work of natural muscles. When living muscle tissue is attached to posts at the corners of the device, the muscle’s contractions pull on the spring, forming an effective, natural actuator. The spring can serve as a “skeleton” for future muscle-powered robots. Image: Felice Frankel

New modular, spring-like devices maximize the work of live muscle fibers so they can be harnessed to power biohybrid bots.

Engineers design flexible "skeletons" for soft, muscle-powered robots

The integration of robotics into manufacturing has radically boosted efficiency and quality and lowered costs. However, large industrial robots also pose a threat to human safety due to their size, weight, and ‘on/off’ programming. In an effort to solve this problem, collaborative robots, or cobots, have been introduced to manufacturing facilities. These lightweight robots are designed to work alongside human workers. However, cobots cannot do the same grunt work as their more industrial cousins, leaving a gap between the small save robots and the caged larger machines.&nbsp;Blue Danube Robotics, the company behind <a href="https://www.airskin.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">AIRSKIN®</a>, aims to solve this industrial automation problem. Their innovative product, AIRSKIN®, is a breakthrough technology designed as a soft, tactile skin for industrial robots, enabling them to work alongside humans safely. This patented solution allows robots to perform a broader range of tasks in close proximity to human workers, revolutionizing how robotic automation integrates into human-centric work environments.&nbsp;<h1 dir="ltr">AIRSKIN® enables an open workplace with robots</h1>The integration of robots into the industrial workforce presents a unique set of safety challenges. The limitations of traditional safety measures and even the most advanced cobots have made it clear that a new approach is needed to harmonize human-robot collaboration. This is where AIRSKIN® enters the scene, offering a solution that addresses these challenges.AIRSKIN® seamlessly integrates with industrial robots and transforms traditional manufacturing setups into collaborative environments. This reduces hazardous collision areas and ensures maximum safety with PLe / Cat. 3 certification.<h3 dir="ltr">Upgrade to Collaborative Robots</h3>AIRSKIN® transforms standard industrial robots into fenceless, collaborative &nbsp;robots. This transformation allows robots to operate in close proximity to humans and other machinery, enhancing productivity and efficiency while maintaining a safe working environment. By eliminating the need for physical barriers, AIRSKIN® enables seamless collaboration between humans and robots, optimizing workflow and reducing downtime. AIRSKIN® works with all robots, already off-the-shelves products exist for KUKA (Agilus 2, Cybertech 2, Iontec, Quantec 2), Stäubli (TX2touch) and Epson (Scaraflex).&nbsp;<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzEyNzM5Mzg3MDk5LXNlY29uZC5qcGciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjk1MCwiZml0IjoiY292ZXIifX19" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">AIRSKIN® transforms standard industrial robots into fenceless, collaborative robots. Credit: AIRSKIN.<h3 dir="ltr" id="isPasted">Innovative Design and Functionality</h3>AIRSKIN® comprises soft and robust air-filled pads mounted on the robot, with embedded safety electronics that monitor internal air pressure and instantly react to contact anywhere on the robot. Dual-channel pressure sensors detect pressure changes, ensuring precise and rapid response to potential collisions in a maximum of 8ms.Equipped with intelligent sensors and real-time monitoring capabilities, AIRSKIN® detects and responds to potential hazards with precision and speed, mitigating the risk of accidents and injuries. Certified according to ISO 13849 with the highest safety performance level PLe / Cat.3, AIRSKIN® meets all industrial requirements, including high durability and IP54 rating.AIRSKIN® offers adaptability to various industrial environments and applications, seamlessly integrating into existing workflows. Its space-saving design eliminates the need for physical barriers, optimizing floor space by up to 90% compared to traditional fencing systems, thereby unlocking new possibilities for layout optimization and production line flexibility.<h1 dir="ltr">How&nbsp;AIRSKIN® is used</h1>AIRSKIN® can be added to industrial robot applications to enable them to have ‘collaborative’ status by effectively covering all hazardous collision areas. The maximum speed for the robot is based on a risk assessment and can reach up to 2m/s in collaborative mode.AIRSKIN® can help large payload robots achieve movement speed of beyond 1 m/s, while still maintaining operator safety. The AIRSKIN® Modules help absorb energy and distribute the contact forces associated, helping them avoid serious injury.<h3 dir="ltr">Clamping/shearing collisions</h3>For clamping/shearing collisions the robot’s stopping distance must be shorter than the thickness of the soft AIRSKIN®. In order to accommodate these stringent application areas, a risk assessment needs to be done to determine the permissible speed. It must be obtained by measuring contact forces occurring in the collision using an ISO/TS 15066 compliant measurement device.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzEyNzM5NDIyODQyLXRoaXJkLmpwZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Safer workplaces enable more agile and customized workflows. Credit: AIRKSIN.<h1 dir="ltr" id="isPasted">Advancing Industry 4.0</h1>Robotics is a pivotal component of Industry 4.0. AIRSKIN® enables companies to convert existing robotic setups to collaborative, human-safe zones. This can radically increase efficiency by reducing downtime usually created by safety cage protocols. It also enables more agile and customized workflows, which are integral to meeting industry 4.0 goals.&nbsp;Industry 4.0 benefits With AIRSKIN®<ul><li dir="ltr">Speed:&nbsp;Up to 6 times faster than applications with cobots, achieving speeds of up to 2 m/s for collaboration.</li><li dir="ltr">Flexibility:&nbsp;Safety system mounted on the robot offers flexibility in location and task execution.</li><li dir="ltr">Space Optimization:&nbsp;Optimizing installation footprint by up to 90%, maximizing operational efficiency.</li><li dir="ltr">Payload &amp; Reach: Supporting a wide range of payloads and reaches for various robotic applications. – like AIRSKIN for KUKA Quantec – up to 300 kg payload&nbsp;</li><li dir="ltr">Precision:&nbsp;Offering highest accuracy, repeatability, and path consistency for precise operations.</li><li dir="ltr">Risk Assessment: Prepared safety concept simplifies application assessments, ensuring compliance with safety standards.</li></ul><h3 dir="ltr">AIRSKIN Safetyflange: Advancing Safety and Efficiency</h3>AIRSKIN Safetyflange, a compliant robotic collision sensor, extends the safety benefits of AIRSKIN® technology to protect tools, workpieces, and individuals from potential hazards. Designed for easy mounting with any robot and end-of-arm tool, AIRSKIN Safetyflange ensures compliance with safety standards while maximizing workplace safety without compromising productivity.Key Features:<ul><li dir="ltr">Finger-Safe Applications:&nbsp;Eliminates crushing and clamping risks, ensuring compliance with safety standards.</li><li dir="ltr">Adjustable Break-Away Forces:&nbsp;Absorbs energy and reduces pressure and force during collisions in collaborative applications.</li><li dir="ltr">Compliance in All Directions:&nbsp;Adjustable compliance minimizes contact forces, maximizing workplace safety.</li><li dir="ltr">Easy Mounting Compatibility:&nbsp;Simplifies integration with any robot and tool using exchangeable ISO 9409-1 adapters.</li><li dir="ltr">Safety Certification: Complies with the PLe / Cat. 3 ISO 13849 safety certification, setting a new standard for safe and efficient operations.</li></ul><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5ljMxWZMLvc?&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</iframe><h1 dir="ltr">Versatile Applications</h1>AIRSKIN Safetyflange is suitable for a wide range of applications, including palletizing, machine tending, visual inspection, gluing, and more, making it a versatile solution for enhancing safety and efficiency in industrial environments.AIRSKIN® marks a pivotal advancement in the sphere of industrial automation, fundamentally transforming how safety and efficiency are perceived and implemented in collaborative workspaces. By integrating AIRSKIN® into your operations, your business can set new benchmarks for what is possible to achieve with human-robot collaboration. There is immense potential for AIRSKIN®-equipped robots to redefine and enrich collaborative workspaces, allowing a future where robots and humans can work side by side with unprecedented efficiency and safety.As we move further into the Industry 4.0 era, the impact of <a href="https://www.airskin.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">AIRSKIN®</a> represents the endless possibilities at the intersection of innovation, safety, and collaboration. It fosters a new period of industrial productivity and human-centric automation.

AIRSKIN® revolutionizes industrial automation by adding air-powered tactile skin for to robots to create safe, collaborative environments, ensuring maximum safety with PLe / Cat. 3 certification.

Bringing Freedom into Factories: How Air-Powered Tech Paves the Way for Human-Robot Harmony

Dive into the future of Edge AI with an in-depth look at the top 5 AI Single Board Computers shaping tomorrow's tech. 

Exploring the Frontier of Edge AI: Top 5 Single Board Computers (SBCs)

A robot mimics the folded look of rose petals to grasp complex shapes more easily than a traditional hand. A pneumatic clamp makes it easier for people with motor disabilities to safely wield kitchen knives. Prostheses utilize shape memory polymers to better replicate the range of motion of a limb.All three of these concepts fall under the category of “soft robotics,” a field that uses strings, magnets, air, water and other non-rigid elements to design robotic solutions for biomechanical or industrial challenges.The Soft Robotics Toolkit (SRT), developed by the&nbsp;<a href="http://biodesign.seas.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Harvard Biodesign Lab</a> at the&nbsp;<a href="https://seas.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences</a> (SEAS), aims to provide a platform for designers, researchers and students to share information and resources in the field. Led by Conor Walsh, Paul A. Maeder Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS, the group recently resumed the SRT Competition, which challenged teams to design, fabricate and present their soft robotic innovations. The competition ran annually from 2015-18, then returned as a virtual showcase this year.“We have a new team at the SRT, and with that team comes new excitement and eagerness to continue to provide useful and engaging content to our audience,” said Jesse Grupper, a mechanical engineering research fellow in the Harvard Biodesign Lab and member of the&nbsp;<a href="https://softroboticstoolkit.com/" target="_blank">SRT team</a>. “We want to continue to benefit our SRT community and felt like now was the time to show that we are still committed and want to continue to see growth in the field.”Thirty-five teams from around the world competed in Open, College and High School categories of the SRT Competition. Projects were judged based on innovation, implementation, and documentation, with cash prizes awarded to the top designs in each category.“Sharing these novel projects on our site garners the interest of other researchers, encourages beginners in the field to join the community, and excites members to continue to contribute their own projects,” Grupper said. “Overall, the SRT Competition enables more people to become involved with the community which further pushes the boundaries of the field as a whole.”<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E1wAI09LaoY?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe>ROSE: Torsional Robotic Soft Gripper (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology )First place in the Open category went to ROSE, a torsional soft robotic gripper designed at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. The funnel-shaped gripper folds around and encompasses objects, enabling the soft membrane to grasp and hold complex, small or slippery objects. The Open runner-up prize went to a team from Northeastern University, which designed a series of pneumatically actuated origami robots that can support the weight of a human being.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/H6yJK9ToCL8?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe>Dual-Mode Soft Robotics for Enhancing Kitchen Independence for Fine Motor Disabilities (Barker College in Hornsby, Australia)In the College category, a team from Barker College in Australia designed a pair of soft grippers for use in the kitchen. When actuated, the devices hold or clamp vegetables in place, making it easier for a person with motor challenges to chop or cut them. Runner-up went to a soft robotic hand designed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3nRMOhhcFqM?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe>4D Prosthetic (Quarry Lane School)A team from Quarry Lane School in California won the High School category with its 4D Prosthetic. The device uses shape memory polymers to simulate complex motions such as fingers gripping an object. The polymers hold their shape until exposed to heat such as a hot water bath, at which point they can be reshaped into a new position.“The SRT Team has undergone a lot of changes in the last five years,” Grupper said. “While our staff has shifted, and some of our objectives have changed, we've always been dedicated to expanding the field, and fostering an inclusive space for those that want to join our community.”

A robot mimics the folded look of rose petals to grasp complex shapes more easily than a traditional hand. A pneumatic clamp makes it easier for people with motor disabilities to safely wield kitchen knives. Prostheses utilize shape memory polymers to better replicate the range of motion of a limb.

A world of soft robotics

Many roboticists dream of building robots that are not just a combination of metal or other hard materials and motors but also softer and more adaptable. Soft robots could interact with their environment in a completely different way; for example, they could cushion impacts the way human limbs do, or grasp an object delicately. This would also offer benefits regarding energy consumption: robot motion today usually requires a lot of energy to maintain a position, whereas soft systems could store energy well, too. So, what could be more obvious than to take the human muscle as a model and attempt to recreate it?The functioning of artificial muscles is thus based on biology. Like their natural counterparts, artificial muscles contract in response to an electrical impulse. However, the artificial muscles consist not of cells and fibres but of a pouch filled with a liquid (usually oil), the shell of which is partially covered in electrodes. When these electrodes receive an electrical voltage, they draw together and push the liquid into the rest of the pouch, which flexes and is thus capable of lifting a weight. A single pouch is analogous to a short bundle of muscle fibres; several of these can be connected to form a complete propulsion element, which is also referred to as an actuator or simply as an artificial muscle.<h2>Voltage too high</h2>The idea of developing artificial muscles is not new, but until now, there has been a major obstacle to realising it: electrostatic actuators worked only with extremely high voltages of around 6,000 to 10,000 volts. This requirement had several ramifications: for instance, the muscles had to be connected to large, heavy voltage amplifiers; they did not work in water; and they weren’t entirely safe for humans. A new solution has now been developed by Robert Katzschmann, a robotics professor at ETH Zurich, together with Stephan-Daniel Gravert, Elia Varini and further colleagues. They have published their version of an artificial muscle that offers several advantages in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adi9319" target="_blank">Science Advances</a>.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1707301253189-image.imageformat.1286.1072599588.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The diagram shows how the artificial muscle works and how the new shell is structured. (Graphic: Gravert et al. Science Advances 2024 / ETH Zurich)Gravert, who works as a scientific assistant in Katzschmann’s lab, has designed a shell for the pouch. The researchers call the new artificial muscles HALVE actuators, where HALVE stands for “hydraulically amplified low-voltage electrostatic”. “In other actuators, the electrodes are on the outside of the shell. In ours, the shell consists of different layers. We took a high-permittivity ferroelectric material, i.e. one that can store relatively large amounts of electrical energy, and combined it with a layer of electrodes. Next, we coated it with a polymer shell that has excellent mechanical properties and makes the pouch more stable,” Gravert explains. This meant the researchers could reduce the required voltage, because the much higher permittivity of the ferroelectric material allows large forces despite low voltage. Not only did Gravert and Varini develop the shell for the HALVE actuators together, but they also built the actuators themselves in the lab to use in two robots.<h2>Grippers and fish show what the muscle can do</h2>&nbsp;One of these robotic examples is an 11-centimetre-tall gripper with two fingers. Each finger is moved by three series-connected pouches of the HALVE actuator. A small battery-operated power supply provides the robot with 900 volts. Together, the battery and power supply weigh just 15 grams. The entire gripper, including the power and control electronics, weighs 45 grams. The gripper can grip a smooth plastic object firmly enough to support its own weight when the object is lifted into the air with a cord. “This example excellently demonstrates how small, light and efficient the HALVE actuators are. It also means that we’ve taken a huge step closer to our goal of creating integrated muscle-operated systems,” Katzschmann says with satisfaction.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EmCRqflcPsM?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</iframe>Grippers powered by artificial muscles in action. (Video: Gravert et al. Science Advances 2024)The second object is a fish-like swimmer, almost 30 centimetres long, that can move smoothly through the water. It consists of a “head” containing the electronics and a flexible “body” to which the HALVE actuators are attached. These actuators move alternately in a rhythm that produces the swimming motion. The autonomous fish can go from a standstill to a speed of three centimetres per second in 14 seconds – and that’s in normal tap water.&nbsp;<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T6mZNCvZQEo?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</iframe>A swimmer moves in the water using only muscle power. (Video: Gravert et al. Science Advances 2024)<h2 id="isPasted">Waterproof and self-sealing</h2>This second example is important because it demonstrates another new feature of the HALVE actuators: as the electrodes no longer sit unprotected outside the shell, the artificial muscles are now waterproof and can also be used in conductive liquids. “The fish illustrates a general advantage of these actuators – the electrodes are protected from the environment and, conversely, the environment is protected from the electrodes. So, you can operate these electrostatic actuators in water or touch them, for example,” Katzschmann explains. And the layered structure of the pouches has another advantage: the new actuators are much more robust than other artificial muscles.Ideally, the pouches should be able to achieve a great deal of motion and do it quickly. However, even the smallest production error, such as a speck of dust between the electrodes, can lead to an electrical breakdown – a kind of mini lightning strike. “When this happened in earlier models, the electrode would burn, creating a hole in the shell. This allowed the liquid to escape and rendered the actuator useless,” Gravert says. This problem is solved in the HALVE actuators because a single hole essentially closes itself due to the protective plastic outer layer. As a result, the pouch usually remains fully functional even after an electrical breakdown.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1707301354571-image.imageformat.lightbox.998373277.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The new HALVE actuator was still fully functional, even with more than 30 holes in it. (Photograph: Gravert et al. Science Advances 2024)The two researchers are clearly delighted to have taken the development of artificial muscles a decisive step forward, but they are also realistic. As Katzschmann says, “Now we have to ready this technology for larger-scale production, and we can’t do that here in the ETH lab. Without giving too much away, I can say that we’re already registering interest from companies that would like to work with us.” For example, artificial muscles could one day be used in novel robots, prostheses or wearables; in other words, in technologies that are worn on the human body.<hr><h2 id="isPasted">Reference</h2>Gravert SD, Varini E, Kazemipour A, Michelis MY, Buchner T, Hinchet R, Katzschmann RK: Low-voltage electrohydraulic actuators for untethered robotics. Science Advances, 5. Januar 2024, doi: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adi9319" target="_blank">10.1126/sciadv.adi9319</a>

Artificial muscles in action under water. (Photograph: Screenshot from video by Gravert et al. Science Advances 2024)

Researchers at ETH Zurich have recently developed artificial muscles for robot motion. Their solution offers several advantages over previous technologies: it can be used wherever robots need to be soft rather than rigid or where they need more sensitivity when interacting with their environment.

Artificial muscles - lighter, safer, more robust

“Soft robots,” medical devices and implants, and next-generation drug delivery methods could soon be guided with magnetism—thanks to a metal-free magnetic gel developed by researchers at the University of Michigan and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany.The material is the first in which carbon-based, magnetic molecules are chemically bonded to the molecular network of a gel, creating a flexible, long-lived magnet for soft robotics. The study describing the material was published today in the journal Matter.Creating robots from flexible materials allows them to <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7527653" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">contort</a> in unique ways, <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2209819119" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">handle delicate objects</a> and explore places that other robots cannot. More rigid robots would be crushed by the<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03153-z" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;deep ocean’s pressure</a> or could damage sensitive tissues in <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/scirobotics.abc8191?casa_token=hqd5r3mI-VQAAAAA%3AJVE7YGtecWNWrACNynbQVLZfQCkJE6ngbzcmRnFo7u2Lb2K2oD6suzJvchvjpYa0zj9w4VBjykjmwQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the human body</a>, for example.“If you make robots soft, you need to come up with new ways to give them power and make them move so that they can do work,” said <a href="https://mse.engin.umich.edu/people/abdon" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Abdon Pena-Francesch</a>, assistant professor of materials science and engineering affiliated with the Robotics Institute at the University of Michigan and a corresponding author of the study.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1706103853343-Precursor-material-1.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Pena-Francesch holds the soft gel before it is treated with chemicals that give the material its magnetic properties. The colorless precursor can be molded into a variety of shapes—such as capsules that could one day be ingested to deliver medicine. Photo credit: Brenda Ahearn, Michigan Engineering.Today’s prototypes typically move with hydraulics or mechanical wires, which require the robot to be tethered to a power source or controller, also limiting where they can go. Magnets could unleash these robots, enabling them to be moved by magnetic fields.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1706103920253-TEMPO_structure.png" style="width: 740px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The chemical structure of the organic magnet. Brown lines and black nodes show the general layout of the “cross-linking molecules” that serve as the frame for the gel’s molecular structure and a cage for the TEMPO molecules (shown in red). The TEMPO molecules are bonded directly to the gel structure. Free electrons on the TEMPO oxygen atoms (shown as dots) give the material its magnetic properties. Image credit: Abdon Pena-Francesch, BioInspired Materials Lab, University of Michigan.Conventional, metallic magnets introduce their own complications, however. They could reduce the flexibility of soft robots and be too <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jab.770060110" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">toxic</a> for some medical applications.The new gel could be a nontoxic alternative for medical operations, and further modifications to the magnet’s chemical structure could help it degrade in the environment and human body. Such biodegradable magnets could be used in capsules that are guided to targeted locations of the body to release medicine.“If these materials can safely degrade in your body, you don’t have to retrieve them with another surgery later,” Pena-Francesch said. “This is still pretty exploratory, but these materials could enable newer, cheaper medical operations some day.”The team’s gel consists solely of carbon-based molecules. The key ingredient is TEMPO, a molecule with a “free” electron that is not paired up with another electron inside an atomic bond. The spin of every unpaired TEMPO electron in the gel aligns under a magnetic field, which attracts the gel to other magnetic materials.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1706103947442-BlockM.jpg" style="width: 594px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The magnetic gel can be carved and molded into a variety of shapes, including the University of Michigan block M. Photo credit: Abdon Pena-Francesch, BioInspired Materials Lab, University of Michigan.Additional “cross-linking molecules” in the gel act like a frame that connects the TEMPO molecules to a solid network structure while forming a protective cage around the TEMPO electrons. That cage prevents the unpaired electrons from forming bonds, which would remove the gel’s magnetic properties.“Earlier studies soaked these small, magnetic molecules into a gel, but they could leak out of the gel,” said Zane Zhang, a doctoral student in materials science and engineering and co-author of the study. “By integrating the magnetic molecules into the cross-linked gel network, they are fixed inside.”Locking the TEMPO molecules inside the material ensures that the gel does not leak potentially harmful TEMPO molecules into the body and allows the material to retain its magnetic properties for more than a year.While weaker than metallic magnets, the TEMPO magnets are strong enough to be pulled and bent with another magnet. Their weaker magnetism also has some upsides—TEMPO magnets can be photographed by an MRI, unlike stronger magnets that can&nbsp;<a href="https://med.stanford.edu/bmrgroup/Research/mri-near-metal.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">distort MRI images</a> to the point of uselessness.“Medical devices using our magnets could be used to deliver drugs to target locations and measure tissue adhesion and mechanics in the GI tract under MRI imaging,” said Metin Sitti, former director of the Physical Intelligence Department at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and a corresponding author of the study.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NTAWzVN5pNg?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-gtm-yt-inspected-9="true" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe>Designing Non-Metallic Squishy Magnets to Power Soft Robots

Strong enough to move soft robots and medical capsules, weak enough to not ruin MRI images

Squishy, metal-free magnets to power robots and guide medical implants

In this episode, we talk about how a soft robotic exoskeleton from Harvard and Boston University is allowing patients suffering from Parkinson’s Disease to get their independence back by being able to walk safely without extra assistance.

Podcast: Exoskeleton To Help Parkinson's Patients Walk

This article was discussed in our <a href="https://www.wevolver.com/profile/the.next.byte" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Next Byte podcast</a>.&nbsp;<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/c7a0deb3-ad50-40fa-8df2-1273193fb185?dark=false" class="fr-draggable" data-gtm-yt-inspected-9="true" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe> The full article will continue below.<hr> <iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pAWrypkeDXM?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-gtm-yt-inspected-9="true" id="72780686" title="Soft robotic device improves walking for individual with Parkinson’s disease">&nbsp;&nbsp;</iframe>Freezing is one of the most common and debilitating symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects more than 9 million people worldwide. When individuals with Parkinson’s disease freeze, they suddenly lose the ability to move their feet, often mid-stride, resulting in a series of staccato stutter steps that get shorter until the person stops altogether. These episodes are one of the biggest contributors to falls among people living with Parkinson’s disease.&nbsp;Today, freezing is treated with a range of pharmacological, surgical or behavioral therapies, none of which are particularly effective.&nbsp;What if there was a way to stop freezing altogether?Researchers from the <a href="https://seas.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences&nbsp;</a>(SEAS) and the <a href="https://www.bu.edu/sargent/" target="_blank">Boston University Sargent College of Health &amp; Rehabilitation Sciences</a> have used a soft, wearable robot to help a person living with Parkinson’s walk without freezing. The robotic garment, worn around the hips and thighs, gives a gentle push to the hips as the leg swings, helping the patient achieve a longer stride.&nbsp;The device completely eliminated the participant’s freezing while walking indoors, allowing them to walk faster and further than they could without the garment’s help.&nbsp;“We found that just a small amount of mechanical assistance from our soft robotic apparel delivered instantaneous effects and consistently improved walking across a range of conditions for the individual in our study,” said <a href="https://seas.harvard.edu/person/conor-walsh" target="_blank">Conor Walsh</a>, the Paul A. Maeder Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS and co-corresponding author of the study.&nbsp;The research demonstrates the potential of soft robotics to treat this frustrating and potentially dangerous symptom of Parkinson’s disease and could allow people living with the disease to regain not only their mobility but their independence.&nbsp;The research is published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02731-8" target="_blank">Nature Medicine.&nbsp;</a>For over a decade, Walsh’s<a href="https://biodesign.seas.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">&nbsp;Biodesign Lab&nbsp;</a>at SEAS has been developing assistive and rehabilitative robotic technologies to improve mobility for individuals’ post-stroke and those living with ALS or other diseases that impact mobility. Some of that technology, specifically an exosuit for post-stroke gait retraining, received support from the <a href="https://wyss.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering</a>, and was licensed and commercialized by <a href="https://rewalk.com/restore-exo-suit/" target="_blank">ReWalk Robotics</a>.In 2022, SEAS and Sargent College received a grant from the <a href="https://innovation.masstech.org/news/baker-polito-administration-awards-harvard-and-boston-university-3-million-assistive-robotics" target="_blank">Massachusetts Technology Collaborative</a><a href="https://masstech.org/" target="_blank">&nbsp;</a>to support the development and translation of next-generation robotics and wearable technologies. The research is centered at the <a href="https://www.movelab.seas.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Move Lab</a>, whose mission is to support advances in human performance enhancement with the collaborative space, funding, R&amp;D infrastructure, and experience necessary to turn promising research into mature technologies that can be translated through collaboration with industry partners.This research emerged from that partnership.“Leveraging soft wearable robots to prevent freezing of gait in patients with Parkinson’s required a collaboration between engineers, rehabilitation scientists, physical therapists, biomechanists and apparel designers,” said Walsh, whose team collaborated closely with that of Terry Ellis, &nbsp;Professor and Physical Therapy Department Chair and Director of the <a href="https://www.bu.edu/neurorehab/" target="_blank">Center for Neurorehabilitation at Boston University.&nbsp;</a><blockquote>Leveraging soft wearable robots to prevent freezing of gait in patients with Parkinson’s required a collaboration between engineers, rehabilitation scientists, physical therapists, biomechanists and apparel designers.CONOR WALSHPAUL A. MAEDER PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCES</blockquote>The team spent six months working with a 73-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease, who — despite using both surgical and pharmacologic treatments — endured substantial and incapacitating freezing episodes more than 10 times a day, causing him to fall frequently. These episodes prevented him from walking around his community and forced him to rely on a scooter to get around outside.&nbsp;In previous research, Walsh and his team leveraged human-in-the-loop optimization to demonstrate that a soft, wearable device could be used to augment hip flexion and assist in swinging the leg forward to provide an efficient approach to reduce energy expenditure during walking in healthy individuals. &nbsp;Here, the researchers used the same approach but to address freezing. The wearable device uses cable-driven actuators and sensors worn around the waist and thighs. Using motion data collected by the sensors, algorithms estimate the phase of the gait and generate assistive forces in tandem with muscle movement.The effect was instantaneous. Without any special training, the patient was able to walk without any freezing indoors and with only occasional episodes outdoors. He was also able to walk and talk without freezing, a rarity without the device.&nbsp;“Our team was really excited to see the impact of the technology on the participant’s walking,” said Jinsoo Kim, former PhD student at SEAS and co-lead author on the study.&nbsp;During the study visits, the participant told researchers: “The suit helps me take longer steps and when it is not active, I notice I drag my feet much more. It has really helped me, and I feel it is a positive step forward. It could help me to walk longer and maintain the quality of my life.”&nbsp;“Our study participants who volunteer their time are real partners,” said Walsh. “Because mobility is difficult, it was a real challenge for this individual to even come into the lab, but we benefited so much from his perspective and feedback.”&nbsp;The device could also be used to better understand the mechanisms of gait freezing, which is poorly understood.&nbsp;“Because we don’t really understand freezing, we don’t really know why this approach works so well,” said Ellis. “But this work suggests the potential benefits of a ’bottom-up’ rather than ’top-down’ solution to treating gait freezing. We see that restoring almost-normal biomechanics alters the peripheral dynamics of gait and may influence the central processing of gait control.”The research was co-authored by Jinsoo Kim, Franchino Porciuncula, Hee Doo Yang, Nicholas Wendel, Teresa Baker and Andrew Chin. Asa Eckert-Erdheim and Dorothy Orzel also contributed to the design of the technology, as well as Ada Huang, and Sarah Sullivan managed the clinical research. It was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant CMMI-1925085; the National Institutes of Health under grant NIH U01 TR002775; and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, Collaborative Research and Development Matching Grant.

Robotic exosuit eliminated gait freezing, a common and highly debilitating symptom

Soft robotic, wearable device improves walking for individual with Parkinson's disease

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soft robotics

Soft Robotics

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