Loading...
Leveraging elastic instabilities for amplified performance: Spine-inspired high-speed and high-force soft robots
Tang, Y Chi, Y Sun, J Huang, TH Maghsoudi, OH Spence, A Zhao, J Su, H Yin, J
Tang, Y
Chi, Y
Sun, J
Huang, TH
Maghsoudi, OH
Spence, A
Zhao, J
Su, H
Yin, J
Citations
Altmetric:
Genre
Journal Article
Date
2020-05-01
Advisor
Committee member
Group
Department
Subject
Permanent link to this record
Collections
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
DOI
10.1126/sciadv.aaz6912
Abstract
Copyright © 2020 The Authors, Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of spine-inspired fast and strong soft machines. Unlike most current soft robots that are designed as inherently and unimodally stable, our design leverages tunable snap-through bistability to fully explore the ability of soft robots to rapidly store and release energy within tens of milliseconds. We demonstrate this generic design principle with three high-performance soft machines: High-speed cheetah-like galloping crawlers with locomotion speeds of 2.68 body length/s, high-speed underwater swimmers (0.78 body length/s), and tunable low-to-high-force soft grippers with over 1 to 103 stiffness modulation (maximum load capacity is 11.4 kg). Our study establishes a new generic design paradigm of next-generation high-performance soft robots that are applicable for multifunctionality, different actuation methods, and materials at multiscales.
Description
Citation
Citation to related work
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Has part
Science Advances
ADA compliance
For Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accommodation, including help with reading this content, please contact scholarshare@temple.edu