TY - GEN
T1 - Miniaturized untethered soft robots using hydrogel-based soft voxel actuators
AU - Khodambashi, Roozbeh
AU - Berman, Spring
AU - He, Ximin
AU - Aukes, Daniel M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by Office of Naval Research through grant number N00014-17-1-211.
Funding Information:
*This work was supported by Office of Naval Research through grant number N00014-17-1-2117 1The Polytechnic School, Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, Arizona State University, 6075 Innovation Way West, Mesa, AZ, USA. 2School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA. 3Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, 90095, USA. rkhodamb@asu.edu danaukes@asu.edu
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 IEEE.
PY - 2021/4/12
Y1 - 2021/4/12
N2 - Current soft actuators rely on additional hardware such as pumps, high voltage supplies, light generation sources and magnetic field generators for their operation. These components resist miniaturization and embedding them into small-scale soft robots would be challenging. This limits their mobile applications where the entire system needs to be untethered especially in hyper-redundant robots where a high number of actuators are needed. Here, we introduce miniature and untethered robots made of soft voxel actuators (SVAs) - an active voxel using stimuli-responsive hydrogels actuated by electrical currents through Joule heating. SVAs weighing only 100 mg require small footprint microcontrollers for their operation which can be embedded in the robotic system. We have demonstrated the advantages of hydrogel-based SVAs through a hyper-redundant manipulator with 16 actuators and an untethered miniature robot for underwater mobile applications.
AB - Current soft actuators rely on additional hardware such as pumps, high voltage supplies, light generation sources and magnetic field generators for their operation. These components resist miniaturization and embedding them into small-scale soft robots would be challenging. This limits their mobile applications where the entire system needs to be untethered especially in hyper-redundant robots where a high number of actuators are needed. Here, we introduce miniature and untethered robots made of soft voxel actuators (SVAs) - an active voxel using stimuli-responsive hydrogels actuated by electrical currents through Joule heating. SVAs weighing only 100 mg require small footprint microcontrollers for their operation which can be embedded in the robotic system. We have demonstrated the advantages of hydrogel-based SVAs through a hyper-redundant manipulator with 16 actuators and an untethered miniature robot for underwater mobile applications.
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U2 - 10.1109/RoboSoft51838.2021.9479329
DO - 10.1109/RoboSoft51838.2021.9479329
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85114208937
T3 - 2021 IEEE 4th International Conference on Soft Robotics, RoboSoft 2021
SP - 571
EP - 574
BT - 2021 IEEE 4th International Conference on Soft Robotics, RoboSoft 2021
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 4th IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics, RoboSoft 2021
Y2 - 12 April 2021 through 16 April 2021
ER -