Tiny Feather Star Robot Swims On Two Actuators

Researchers at North Carolina State University have created an aquatic soft robot inspired by marine invertebrates called Feather Stars. The Feather Star robot is able to move through the water in all three dimensions, powered by only two actuators. The Feather Star robot’s design is based on the concept of mechanical intelligence.

This refers to dynamic objects - robots in this case - whose behavior is governed largely by their structure and how they interact with their environment, reducing the amount of input necessary from computers or human users. Jie Yin, corresponding author of a paper on the work and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University, said the work demonstrates how to create robots with a wide range of motion using a minimum number of actuators: “In this case, we created an aquatic soft robot that can move in three dimensions – up and down, forward and backward, and rotating on its axis.

Normally, you would need at least six actuators to accomplish this. But due to its structural design, we accomplish this range of motion with only two actuators in the Feather Star robot. This is an example of using mechanical intelligence to create a more efficient design.” The team had previously created an aquatic robot inspired by a manta ray, and that design was capable of moving quickly through the water, but didn't have three-dimensional maneuverability, according to Haitao Qing, first author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley.

The goal of the Feather Star robot was to design a robot that had greater maneuverability without relying on unduly complicated mechanisms. Feather Stars can move in any direction or hover in place by coordinating the movement of their limbs. Mimicking this, the feather star robot has four "wings" protruding from a central disk that contains two actuators.

The wings are elastic and monostable, meaning the wings can be bent but will snap back to their original position. When both actuators are activated, all four wings snap down – and when the actuator is turned off, the wings snap back up. By rapidly activating and deactivating both actuators, the robot flaps its wings quickly and rises in the water column.

When the actuators are turned off, the wings stop flapping and the robot descends in the water column. And by flapping its wings slowly, the robot is able to hover in place. The researchers call this "jellyfish mode." To move forward or backward, the researchers only activate one actuator.

This makes one wing flutter, like a tailfin, pushing the robot in the opposite direction. The researchers call this "fish mode." And by alternating rapidly between the two actuators, the researchers can make the robot rotate on its axis, allowing them to steer the robot in any direction.

The researchers call this "rotor mode." By combining these three modes, the robot can be moved in all three dimensions. The team showed the potential utility of the robots for tasks such as exploring underwater spaces with a camera, or lifting objects underwater either alone or by working in concert with other robots.

The paper describing the Feather Star robot is available in the open access journal Science Advances, see link below. More Information Minimal-Actuation Feather Star–Inspired Soft Swimmers for Multimodal 3D Maneuverability Related Articles Robot Rabbits Used To Catch Florida Pythons Keep Aqua Drones, Not Fish Robotic Mice Check Out Large Hadron Collider Robotic Gut Spider For Exploring Digestive Tract Robot Crabs Attacked By Real Crabs To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter , subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Facebook or Linkedin .

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