HEAL thyself. A fresh technique can create soft robots that repair themselves after damage or attack.
Roboticists have long aimed to use soft, flexible materials, but these are too easily damaged. Now, researchers at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) in Belgium have used rubbery polymers that resemble jelly to create a gripper, a robot hand and an artificial muscle (see photo). When ripped or cut, the material was able to knit itself back together completely. All it needed was a little heat.
“The polymer has lots of different strands that lock together to form the material. When you add heat, they reorganise to stick back together without leaving any weak spots,” says Bram Vanderborght, who led the research (Science Robotics, doi.org/cb2c).
These soft materials are ideal for picking up delicate items such as fruit or veg, so could find uses in the food industry. They would also be useful for working alongside humans in factory lines, where softer robotic arms would be safer.
Vanderborght and his team plan to make the self-healing properties automatic, either by altering the material or by making robots that can apply heat themselves. “At the moment, when ordinary robot parts break, they have to be replaced, but that’s soon going to change,” he says.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Robot hand can regenerate itself”