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'DEAnsect': Soft Robotic Insect Impervious to Fly Swatters

Researchers at EPFL  have created a soft robotic insect called "DEAnsect" that is propelled at 3-cm per second by artificial muscles. These muscles are made up of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs), which propel DEAnsect forward via vibrations and enable it to be very light and quick. The team developed two versions of the robot. The first version is tethered using ultra-thin wires and is highly robust. It can be hit with a fly swatter or stepped on by a shoe without impacting its mobility. The second version is an untethered model that is fully wireless and autonomous. It weighs less than one gram and carries its battery and all electronic components on its back. DEAnsect is equipped with a microcontroller for a brain and photodiodes as eyes, allowing it to recognize black and white patterns and enabling the robot to follow any line drawn on the ground.

Read Tech Briefs' interview with lead researcher Herbert Shea.

Topics:
Automation Motion Control Photonics Power Robotics

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    Transcript

    00:00:08 We are happy to be able to present our soft insect-scale robot. It's very robust, you can drop it on the floor, you can even hit it with a fly swatter and it survives. It is lightweight, weights less than 1 gram, and it is intelligent. It can follow a predetermined line on the floor, all by itself. By making special low-voltage artificial muscles, we were able to make the device so energy efficient, that we could keep the whole power-supply on board, including the micro-controller. Our soft robot has three legs, the front, left and right leg. Each leg is driven by our artificial muscle individually. The artificial muscle can drive the leg move forward and backward 450 times per second,

    00:00:47 which enables our soft robot for fast-moving: 3 centimeters per second. Our soft robot can also climb up and down, moving on different terrains with different roughness. In the future, we will add bidirectional communication to this soft robots, allowing them to work together, in collaborative swarms.