A new robot that comes to us from Harvard University engineers is kind of like a much more intense version of one of those little rubber poppers you might have played with as a kid. However, instead of being powered purely by mechanical physics, this high-tech hopper is powered by an explosion of butane and oxygen.
This explosion catapults the robot, described in a report in the journal Science, as high as six times its body height. Robots with bodies made of rigid materials would likely break upon landing, but the new robot's rubber-like 3D-printed body helps to absorb the impact. Integrating soft parts with rigid ones has been a longstanding challenge in the field of soft robotics, so the researchers looked to nature to see how animals have solved this problem.
"For this particular application, this gradient of hard to soft, there are numerous examples in biology and in nature," lead study author Nicholas Bartlett of Harvard University told Tech Times. "One in particular is an octopus, which has an almost entirely soft body except for a very rigid beak. The beak interfaces with the rest of the body not with a rigid, abrupt transition from hard to soft, but a gradient structure similar to what we used in this robot."
Another problem that has plagued soft robots is that they tend to move very slowly. Jumping from place to place allows the new robot to move much more quickly than previous soft robots.
To jump, the robot creates a spark that triggers an explosion powered by butane and oxygen in its combustion chamber. As the video below shows, the robot can launch itself straight upward or it can extend its little ovular legs on one side to tilt itself in a particular direction.
Credit: Harvard Microrobotics Lab
The robot's resilience could be a useful quality in disaster areas or other harsh and unpredictable situations.
"Something that's perhaps a little bit out there but is a fun potential application is in space," Bartlett said. "So on the moon or on Mars where there are obstacles to jump over or uneven terrain."
The robot's body is made of a single 3D-printed piece of a soft, rubber-like material, but it still contains rigid electronic components. Researchers in the field of soft robotics hope to one day design a robot that contains only soft components, even the batteries and electronics.
Compared with traditional robots, soft robots are inherently safer for people to interact with because they don't have rigid parts that can cut or crush us. They also tend to be relatively quick and inexpensive to make, according to Bartlett.
"Soft robotics is sort of taking everything about traditional robots and asking what we can do on the other side of the spectrum," he said.
