Introducing Octobot, the world’s first fully soft-bodied, autonomous robot

Soft robots that do away with actuators, logic boards, and the other rigid structures typically required for movement are a bit of a holy grail in robotics; design engineers have long attempted to mimic natural biology in hopes of replacing hard components with flexible, yet durable, alternatives. A new soft robot developed by scientists from Harvard borrows heavily from the cephalopod, a near-perfect naturally occurring blueprint. The resulting “octobot” is the world’s first full-bodied soft robot.

Nearly all soft robots created up to this point contain at least some hard components, whether that be fuel containers, cables, or a power source. To forgo everything, octobot’s creators needed to think outside of the box, experimenting with 3D-printing, soft lithography, and molding before they were able to replace each solid component with a fully-functional analogous soft piece. The resulting structure is made from a singular piece of 3D-printed silicon, with built-in catalytic reaction chambers and fuel reservoirs that store a hydrogen-based ink fuel within the tentacles.

Octobot’s design is not only self-contained but autonomous and devoid of external controls. It uses a microfluid logic circuit designed by team member George Whiteside to mix controlled amounts of ink with hydrogen peroxide, causing a reaction that spews large amounts of oxygen and water vapor into the tentacles. By blocking the passage with a series of valves and switches, the tentacles alternate between contracting and expanding to create a force of propulsion that moves the robot forward. The effect is very much a starting and stopping of the reaction that pumping the gas into the robot’s arms.

Describing their research journal Nature , the team explains that existing prototype measures less than 2 cm (0.8) in height, is roughly the size of an SSD card, and runs between four to eight minutes before exhausting its fuel supply. Once that occurs, a new robot must be printed.

According to Engineering and Applied Sciences Professor Robert Wood, one of the researchers, the subsequent goal is to devise a means of controlling the direction of its thrust to compensate for its inability to steer. “[T]his research demonstrates that [scientists] can easily manufacture the key components of a simple, entirely soft robot, which lays the foundation for more complex designs.”

Perfecting the technology will yield some practical applications such as agile, sophisticated soft robots capable of responding to an emergency or scouting for data. The current iteration is but a proof of concept.

Source: IFLS, Engadget, and Digital Trends