NRI: INT: COLLAB: Mesh Of Robots on a Pneumatic Highway (MORPH): An Untethered, Human-Safe, Shape-Morphing Robotic Platform

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This project will create and explore a robotic architecture consisting of a compliant, shape-changing, truss-like structure. A truss typically consists of triangles of load-bearing members, each of which can resist tension and compression and each of which is pinned to other members at both ends. In this concept, the structural members are inflated tubes and the nodes are a network of simple robots that can travel along the tube lengths. By their motion, the networked node-robots can cause large shape changes in the overall truss structure, allowing the same robot to reconfigure itself for diverse functions, including different modes of locomotion and manipulation. In addition to the ability to change shape, movement of the node-robots also enables dynamic functionality. Because the structural members are compliant inflatable tubes, the entire structure can be made safe for collaborative activities with human partners. In contrast to some pneumatic robot designs the inflatable tubes nominally maintain a constant volume, hence the system does not need to be tethered to a high capacity pressure source such as a large pump or air tank. This project incorporates strengths from the fields of soft robotics, collective robotics, and truss-based robotics, with the potential to overcome limitations of these individual research areas. The approach offers the potential for enabling ubiquitous, human-safe co-robots for applications such as a shape-changing personal mobility device that could act, as necessary, as a walker, a sit-to-stand aid, a fall-guarding device, or a stair aid. Similarly the approach could be used in industrial applications, such as a multi-function co-robot for construction workers, changing shape as needed to help lift, align, hold, prop, or push. Finally, this versatile and human-friendly concept is well-suited as an education and development platform for non-experts, for example as a hands-on learning tool for K-12 students. This project is organized around three objectives, each requiring increasing complexity and functionality: 1) locomotion across non-flat terrain, 2) crawling, climbing, and jumping, and 3) engulfing, manipulating, and applying large forces to objects in the environment. The project will evaluate the results with respect to the goals of each objective through hypothesis-driven, controlled experiments in real-world scenarios with quantitative metrics and statistical analyses of the results. New fundamental knowledge is anticipated in the realm of physically networked distributed robots, adding new understanding about the scalability of such systems. The project will also advance knowledge surrounding customizability of robotic systems to specific environments and tasks, exploring optimal control and shape change of a given topology. Additionally, the development of controllable friction materials for large-scale soft robots will provide new understanding of interactions between soft robots and their environments. Finally, the development of a new paradigm of constant-volume pneumatic robotics constitutes a groundbreaking conceptual advance to the field of soft robotics, which will greatly enhance the practicality of soft mobile robots, by eliminating the need for an air supply.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.