How to build a robot that is both flexible and strong? Tightening bottle cap screws is a breeze

​Big Data Digest Works

Author: Mickey

When researchers create robots, it is easy to fall into the dilemma of balancing two qualities-flexibility and sturdiness. . Generally speaking, it is difficult to have both qualities, but for many scenes that require careful operation, both are indispensable.

In a recent study, researchers created a robot that is highly flexible while still maintaining high tension in its "muscles," giving it enough twisting motion to complete difficult tasks. task. In one experiment, the robot was able to remove caps from bottles while generating 2.5 times the twisting motion of the leading robot in its class.

The results were published in the January 13 issue of IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

Paper link: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9999348

Tensegrity robot consists of a network of rigid frames and flexible cables composition, which allows them to change shape by adjusting internal tension.

Ryota Kobayashi, a master's student at Tokyo Institute of Technology who participated in the research, explained: "Tensegrity structures have advantages because of their unique properties - lightness, flexibility and durability." "These robots can be used in Operate in challenging unknown environments, such as caves or space, and have more complex and efficient behaviors.” It can vary from 2 to 12, sometimes even more - but as a general rule of thumb, robots with more rods are usually more complex and harder to design.

20% shrinkage, 50-degree torsion in 2 directions

The tensegrity robot consists of a network of rigid frames and flexible cables , which allows them to change shape by adjusting internal tension.

In their research, Ryota's team created a tensegrity robot that relies on six tensegrity modules. To ensure that the robot achieves powerful twisting, a virtual map of triangles is used, in which the robot's artificial muscles are placed so that they connect the vertices of the triangles. When a muscle contracts, it brings the vertices of the triangle closer together.

Relying on this technology, the robot can achieve a large twisting movement of 50 degrees in two directions using only 20% contraction of artificial muscles. Ryota said his team was surprised by the efficiency of the system—tiny contractions of the artificial muscles resulted in large contractions and torsional deformations.

The torsion is 2.5 times that of existing robots

"Most six-bar tensegrity robots will only undergo slight structural deformation. rolling down, resulting in restricted movement," said Hiroyuki Nabae, an assistant professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology who also participated in the study. Notably, the authors report that their six-rod robot generates 2.5 times the large torsional motion of an existing six-rod tensegrity robot.

Next, the research team installed rubber fingers on the robot to help it grasp objects and test its ability to complete tasks. In one experiment, a robotic arm lowered onto a Coca-Cola bottle, grabbed the cap, turned, raised the arm and repeated the grasp and turn motion to remove the cap within seconds.

The researchers are considering ways to build on this technology, for example, by increasing the robot's ability to bend in different directions, combined with technology that would allow the robot to recognize new shapes in its environment. Advances in the latter could help robots better adapt to new environments and tasks as needed.

Source of material: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tensegrity-robot?utm_campaign=post-teaser&utm_cnotallow=e0401vfk

The above is the detailed content of How to build a robot that is both flexible and strong? Tightening bottle cap screws is a breeze. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!