Cornell University develops insect-sized robot that can lift 22 times its body weight
File photo.
An insect-sized robot has been developed by the prestigious Cornell University that can lift 22 times its body weight. According to a report by the Cornell Chronicle on Monday (September 18), the robot was developed by materials engineer Robert Shepherd at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, with his PhD student Cameron Aubin and their colleagues.
The robot is just over an inch long and weighs the equivalent of one and a half paper clips. It has been 3D-printed with a flame-resistant resin. The report said that the body contains a pair of separated combustion chambers that lead to the four actuators, which serve as the feet.
Each actuator is a hollow cylinder capped with a piece of silicone rubber, like a drum skin, on the bottom. "When offboard electronics are used to create a spark in the combustion chambers, premixed methane, and oxygen are ignited, the combustion reaction inflates the drum skin, and the robot pops up into the air," the report added.
Being powered by combustion allows this robot to do a lot of things that robots at this scale haven’t been able to do at this point, Cameron Aubin said.
"It’s an incredible jumper for its size. It’s also really fast on the ground. All of that is due to the force density and the power density of these fuel-driven actuators,” Aubin added.
The report said that the actuator design also enables a high degree of control. By turning a knob, the operator can adjust the speed and frequency of sparking, or vary the fuel feed in real-time, triggering a dynamic range of responses.
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“Everybody points to these insect-scale robots as being things that could be used for search and rescue, exploration, environmental monitoring, surveillance, navigation in austere environments,” Aubin said.
While the team has yet to create a fully untethered model – the researcher said they were halfway there – the current iteration “absolutely throttles the competition, in terms of their force output.”
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