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Tiny, Four-Gram Origami Robot Crawls & Jumps

Researchers at EPFL have come up with a folding, reconfigurable robot patterned on origami that is capable of crawling and jumping. Named Tribot, its gait pattern is modeled after inchworms, but what makes it unique is its gait mode - it can simultaneously switch between crawling and jumping, which means it can jump over obstacles and then resume moving forward. Tribot is two centimeters tall, weighs 4 grams, and has a T-shaped structure with three legs. All movement comes from a special kind of actuator and intelligent springs, which are made from shape memory alloy (SMA). Movement is induced by thermally activating different parts of the robot. There are two ways to heat the actuators: by sending an electric current into the robot using wires, or with customized wireless micro-heaters.

Topics:
Automation Materials Motion Control Motors & Drives Robotics

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    Transcript

    00:00:05 we get inspiration for our robots from origami unlike other robots that needs to have a fixed tasks and form at the time of design and fabrication I want my robots to be like origami which is very versatile with its form and for robots it will be versatile with its actions which means its tasks we've developed two types of Robo gummy in our

    00:00:29 lab first one is a tripod is a multi locomotive robot which has crawling and jumping properties both modes are inspired by nature the crawling is inspired by the inch form gate and the jumping is inspired by fleas the second one is which is in my hand now is a crawler which has this very simple design conventional motors cannot be used for this application because they

    00:00:56 are bulky that's why we are using very thin sheets of shape-memory alloy actuators which are smart materials that can memorize certain shape the simple architecture enables us to fast and simple manufacturing by 3d printing Robo gummies I think is creates a new platform a new paradigm for robots this is the robots that are more interactive and adaptable to different tasks and

    00:01:23 environments that are not necessarily foreseen you