Navigating Soft Robots through Wireless Heating
Navigating Soft Robots through Wireless Heating
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DOI：
10.1109/icra48891.2023.10161540
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发表时间：
2023-05
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Yiwen Song;Mason Zadan;Kushaan Misra;Zefang Li;Jingxian Wang;C. Majidi;Swarun Kumar
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Yiwen Song;Mason Zadan;Kushaan Misra;Zefang Li;Jingxian Wang;C. Majidi;Swarun Kumar
最近关于无电池软机器人的研究已经证明了使用液晶弹性体（LCE）来构建由外部热量激活的形状变化材料。然而，热源通常必须在机器人的直接视场中（即NIR、激光和可见光EM源或对流加热枪），被拴系到外部电源（即热电加热或电阻焦耳加热器），或者需要限制移动性和范围的重型机载电池。本文提出了一种新型的无电池软机器人平台，可以爬行通过有限的，封闭的，难以达到的空间（如包装，机械，管道等），隐藏在供暖基础设施的视线之外。这是通过软机器人平台和集成软导电迹线的共同设计来实现的，这些软导电迹线通过远程刺激实现无线（微波）加热。我们通过仔细选择材料和机器人的整体机械结构来实现快速驱动，以最大限度地提高加热效率。此外，机器人使用毫米波雷达通过封闭空间主动跟踪，以将热量引导到其位置。我们提供了一个详细的评估机器人的加热效率，位置跟踪精度和爬行速度。
Recent work on battery-free soft robotics has demonstrated the use of liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) to build shape-changing materials activated by applied external heat. However, sources of heat must typically be in direct field-of-view of the robot (i.e. NIR, laser, and visual light EM sources or convective heats guns), be tethered to an external power supply (i.e. thermoelectric heating or resistive joule heaters), or require a heavy on-board battery that limits mobility and range. This paper presents a novel battery-free soft-robotics platform that can crawl through confined, enclosed, and hard-to-reach spaces (e.g. packages, machinery, pipes, etc.), hidden from view of heating infrastructure. This is achieved through the co-design of a soft robotics platform and integrated soft conductive traces that enable wireless (microwave) heating through remote stimulation. We achieve fast actuation through a careful choice of materials and the overall mechanical structure of the robot to maximize heating efficiency. Further, the robot is actively tracked through enclosed spaces using a mm Wave radar to direct heat to its location. We provide a detailed evaluation on the robot's heating efficiency, location-tracking accuracy and crawling speed.