This spider robot is yet another example of the so-called "soft robotics", which is breaking the limitations of traditional robots, with their motors and metallic skeletons.
The spider is a demonstration of the use in robotics of a technology known as microfluidics, the same used to carry out laboratory tests and study cells inside biochips. Máquina vertical de injeção de borracha
In the long term, the idea is to use miniaturized soft robots in delicate surgical procedures on the human body. But its larger versions could also be used in spaces that are too small and too unpredictable to be accessed by rigid robots, or too dangerous for humans.
"By developing a new hybrid technology that combines three different manufacturing techniques, we have created a soft robotic spider made only from silicone rubber, with 18 degrees of freedom, encompassing changes in structure, movement and color, and with tiny details, in the micrometer range ," said Sheila Russo, who carried out the project with Tommaso Ranzani and colleagues from Harvard and Boston universities in the USA.
The spider is just one example of a technique that the team called MORPH (Microfluidic Origami for Reconfigurable Pneumatic/Hydrolic, or microfluidic origami for reconfigurable pneumatics/hydraulics).
It all starts with the use of traditional lithography to produce 12 layers of elastic silicone that, together, constitute the spider's material base. Each layer is precisely cut from a mold using a laser micromachining technique and then glued to the layer below until the spider's 3D structure is created.
The key to transforming this intermediate structure into the mobile robot is a network of microfluidic channels that is integrated into the individual layers. With a third technique, known as injection-induced self-folding, a portion of the microfluidic channels receives a curable resin, which causes the individual layers to fold locally into their final configuration. So, for example, the spider's swollen abdomen and downward-curved legs become permanent features.
The remaining set of microfluidic channels is used to color the eyes and simulate the abdominal color patterns of the peacock spider species, from which the team took inspiration - and, of course, to induce movements in the legs that allow the spider to walk.
Componentes moldados em borracha "The MORPH approach could open up the field of soft robotics to researchers more focused on medical applications, where the smaller sizes and flexibility of these robots could enable an entirely new approach to endoscopy and microsurgery," said Professor Donald Ingber, coordinator of the team.