̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Thomas George-Thuruthel

It’s all in the wrist: energy-efficient robot hand learns how not to drop the ball

sc604 — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 03:23:34 +0000

Researchers have designed a low-cost, energy-efficient robotic hand that can grasp a range of objects – and not drop them – using just the movement of its wrist and the feeling in its ‘skin’.

Self-healing materials for robotics made from ‘jelly’ and salt

sc604 — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 16:54:17 +0000

̽��ֱ��low-cost jelly-like materials, developed by researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, can sense strain, temperature and humidity. And unlike earlier self-healing robots, they can also partially repair themselves at room temperature.

̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal NPG Asia Materials.

Soft sensing technologies could transform robotics, tactile interfaces and wearable devices, among other applications. However, most soft sensing technologies aren’t durable and consume high amounts of energy.

“Incorporating soft sensors into robotics allows us to get a lot more information from them, like how strain on our muscles allows our brains to get information about the state of our bodies,” said David Hardman from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, the paper’s first author.

As part of the EU-funded SHERO project, Hardman and his colleagues have been working to develop soft sensing, self-healing materials for robotic hands and arms. These materials can detect when they are damaged, take the necessary steps to temporarily heal themselves and then resume work – all without the need for human interaction.

“We’ve been working with self-healing materials for several years, but now we’re looking into faster and cheaper ways to make self-healing robots,” said co-author Dr Thomas George-Thuruthel, also from the Department of Engineering.

Earlier versions of the self-healing robots needed to be heated in order to heal, but the Cambridge researchers are now developing materials that can heal at room temperature, which would make them more useful for real-world applications.

“We started with a stretchy, gelatine-based material which is cheap, biodegradable and biocompatible and carried out different tests on how to incorporate sensors into the material by adding in lots of conductive components,” said Hardman.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that printing sensors containing sodium chloride – salt – instead of carbon ink resulted in a material with the properties they were looking for. Since salt is soluble in the water-filled hydrogel, it provides a uniform channel for ionic conduction – the movement of ions.

When measuring the electrical resistance of the printed materials, the researchers found that changes in strain resulted in a highly linear response, which they could use to calculate the deformations of the material. Adding salt also enabled sensing of stretches of more than three times the sensor’s original length, so that the material can be incorporated into flexible and stretchable robotic devices.

̽��ֱ��self-healing materials are cheap and easy to make, either by 3D printing or casting. They are preferable to many existing alternatives since they show long-term strength and stability without drying out, and they are made entirely from widely available, food-safe, materials.

“It’s a really good sensor considering how cheap and easy it is to make,” said George-Thuruthel. “We could make a whole robot out of gelatine and print the sensors wherever we need them.”

̽��ֱ��self-healing hydrogels bond well with a range of different materials, meaning they can easily be incorporated with other types of robotics. For example, much of the research in the Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory, where the researchers are based, is focused on the development of artificial hands. Although this material is a proof-of-concept, if developed further, it could be incorporated into artificial skins and custom-made wearable and biodegradable sensors.

This work was supported by the Self-HEaling soft RObotics (SHERO) project, funded under the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme of the European Commission.

Reference:
David Hardman, Thomas George-Thuruthel, and Fumiya Iida. ‘Self-Healing Ionic Gelatin/Glycerol Hydrogels for Strain Sensing Applications.’ NPG Asia Materials (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41427-022-00357-9

Researchers have developed self-healing, biodegradable, 3D-printed materials that could be used in the development of realistic artificial hands and other soft robotics applications.

It’s a really good sensor considering how cheap and easy it is to make

Thomas George-Thuruthel

Self healing robot developed by Cambridge Uni engineers

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Machine learning to help develop self-healing robots that ‘feel pain’

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 09:11:57 +0000

̽��ֱ��goal of the €3 million Self-healing soft robot (SHERO) project, funded by the European Commission, is to create a next-generation robot made from self-healing materials (flexible plastics) that can detect damage, take the necessary steps to temporarily heal itself and then resume its work – all without the need for human interaction.

Led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Brussels (VUB), the research consortium includes the Department of Engineering ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge), École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI), Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa), and the Dutch Polymer manufacturer SupraPolix.

As part of the SHERO project, the Cambridge team, led by Dr Fumiya Iida from the Department of Engineering are looking at integrating self-healing materials into soft robotic arms.

Dr Thomas George Thuruthel, also from the Department of Engineering, said self-healing materials could have future applications in modular robotics, educational robotics and evolutionary robotics where a single robot can be 'recycled' to generate a fresh prototype.

“We will be using machine learning to work on the modelling and integration of these self-healing materials, to include self-healing actuators and sensors, damage detection, localisation and controlled healing,” he said. “ ̽��ֱ��adaptation of models after the loss of sensory data and during the healing process is another area we are looking to address. ̽��ֱ��end goal is to integrate the self-healing sensors and actuators into demonstration platforms in order to perform specific tasks.”

Professor Bram Vanderborght, from VUB, who is leading the project with scientists from the robotics research centre Brubotics and the polymer research lab FYSC, said: “We are obviously very pleased to be working on the next generation of robots. Over the past few years, we have already taken the first steps in creating self-healing materials for robots. With this research we want to continue and, above all, ensure that robots that are used in our working environment are safer, but also more sustainable. Due to the self-repair mechanism of this new kind of robot, complex, costly repairs may be a thing of the past.”

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge will use self-healing materials and machine learning to develop soft robotics as part of a new collaborative project.

Self-healing robots that ‘feel pain’

Bram Vanderborght

Robotic hand made of self-healing material that can heal at room temperature

Yes