Researchers at University of Sheffield create a new valve that enhances the lifespan of soft robots. This innovation by Dr. Marco Pontin & Dr. Dana Damian of the University’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering enables soft robots to carry on with their function even when part of them if destroyed.
The new valve has been published in the Science Robotics journal; it can easily turn off the sections of the robot that are harmed and/or affected while leaving the other sections working efficiently. This is important given that most soft robots are deigned from flexible materials that are easily bent and deformed; most of them are easily damaged. These robots are ideal where precision is an issue or dealing with other people but could use more robustness to work at the optimum.
How the Valve Works:
Forward Operation Mode: Balances a punctured section in as… 21 msecs to gate in a new plug to salvage it and prevent leakage.
Reverse Operation Mode: Saves the robot from being influenced by very high pressure which will lead to the bursting of the robot.
Combined Mode: The skin of the robot allows it to pump internally to place a covering over a burst and the remainder of the pressure.
ROM behavior characterization and demonstration. Credit: Science Robotics (2024). DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adk9978
This valve is quite compact, light weighted and due to the fact that it only required to be integrate into the soft robot can tremendously enhance the robots sturdiness and versatility.
Dr. Dana Damian, Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, highlighted the significance of this innovation: Soft robots function close to living organisms, or inside their bodies as instruments for medicine and as such can function as tools for the human fragile environment so tolerance to errors is essential for them Our passive fault isolation in the valve helps shrink the size, the number of parts, and thus the cost of the soft robot intelligence can be a part of the shape of bodies.
More contrasting, the Strategic Research Assistant in Soft and Resilient Machines at the University of Sheffield and Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford Dr. Marco Pontin said ‘‘Resilience is important and natural in the context of biological systems to protect the system from certain failure conditions’’.Our new valve is for the soft robots; it makes the passive response of the system toward damages.