Air-powered Hexapod Robot is 3D-printed in One Soft and Flexible Piece

While most people imagine robots as complex electronic devices, made up of several parts that need to be assembled in factories, a new experimental non-electronic robot has been designed to be 3D-printed in one single piece and is powered entirely by air.

The soft-bodied robot was developed by postdoctoral scholar Yichen Zhai and his team, in the lab of Prof. Michael Tolley, at UC San Diego’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

3D Printing the Soft Hexapod in One Continuous Step

They 3D-printed it in one continuous 58-hour step, using a single piece of flexible and soft thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). And yes, it has six legs, each of which has four degrees of freedom, allowing them to move up and down, forward and backward.

A steady stream of compressed air moves the legs instead of electric motors.The air is provided by either a pump or an onboard CO2 canister, passing through an internal “pneumatic oscillating circuit,” and exiting through exhaust ports in the robot’s body.

As the air flows through the circuit, it sequentially triggers a series of TPU actuators, which repeatedly move the legs in two sets of three limbs. This allows the robot to waddle across different types of terrain – it can even walk underwater.

Battery Life and Cost-Efficiency of the Robot

In its fully self-contained configuration, the CO2 canister limits the robot’s runtime. However, when connected to an external pump, it is capable of walking for up to three days without requiring maintenance. And even if the robot wears out after three days, building a new one costs about US$20.

Researchers hope that future versions of the robot will explore environments where electronics won’t work or are impractical, such as high-radiation areas or the surface of other planets. Future research will focus on methods for storing CO2 within the robot and on using 100% biodegradable materials.

This is a completely different way of thinking about building machines, says Tolley.

The researchers recently published a paper on the research in the journal Advanced Science News. You can see the six-legged robot in action in the video below.

Read the original article on: New Atlas

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