MIT researchers report the first
self-contained autonomous soft robot capable of rapid body motion: a fish that
can execute an escape maneuver, convulsing its body to change direction in just
a fraction of a second, or almost as quickly as a real fish can. With soft
robots, collision poses little danger to either the robot or the environment. In
some cases, it is actually advantageous for these robots to bump into the
environment, because they can use these points of contact as means of getting
to the destination faster.
Each side of the fish’s tail is
bored through with a long, tightly undulating channel. Carbon dioxide released
from a canister in the fish’s abdomen causes the channel to inflate, bending
the tail in the opposite direction. Each half of the fish tail has just two
control parameters: the diameter of the nozzle that releases gas into the channel
and the amount of time its left open. The fish can perform 20 or 30 escape
maneuvers, depending on their velocity and angle, before it exhausts its carbon
dioxide canister.
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