The climbing microrobots have attracted growing attention due to their promising applications in exploration and monitoring of complex, unstructured environments. Soft climbing microrobots based on muscle-like actuato...
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The climbing microrobots have attracted growing attention due to their promising applications in exploration and monitoring of complex, unstructured environments. Soft climbing microrobots based on muscle-like actuators could offer excellent flexibility, adaptability, and mechanical robustness. despite the remarkable progress in this area, the development of soft microrobots capable of climbing on flat/curved surfaces and transitioning between two different surfaces remains elusive, especially in open spaces. In this study, we address these challenges by developing voltage-driven soft small-scale actuators with customized3d configurations and active stiffness adjusting. Combination of programmed strain distributions in liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) and buckling-driven 3dassembly, guided by mechanics modeling, allows for voltage-driven, complex 3d-to-3d shape morphing (bending angle > 200 degrees) at millimeter scales (from 1 to 10 mm), which is unachievable previously. These soft actuators enable development of morphable electroadhesive footpads that can conform to different curved surfaces and stiffness-variable smart joints that allow different locomotion gaits in a single microrobot. By integrating such morphable footpads and smart joints with a deformable body, we report a multigait, soft microrobot (length from 6 to 90 mm, and mass from 0.2 to 3 g) capable of climbing on surfaces with diverse shapes (e.g., flat plane, cylinder, wavy surface, wedge-shaped groove, and sphere) and transitioning between two distinct surfaces. We demonstrate that the microrobot could navigate from one surface to another, recording two corresponding ceilings when carrying an integrated microcamera. The developed soft microrobot can also flip over a barrier, survive extreme compression, and climb bamboo and leaf.
development of miniaturized three-dimensional(3d)fliers with integrated functional components has important implications to a diverse range of engineering *** the various active and passive miniaturized3d fliers re...
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development of miniaturized three-dimensional(3d)fliers with integrated functional components has important implications to a diverse range of engineering *** the various active and passive miniaturized3d fliers reported previously,a class of 3d electronic fliers inspired by wind-dispersed seeds show promising potentials,owing to the lightweight and noiseless features,aside from the stable rotational fall associated with a low falling *** on-demand shape-morphing capabilities are essential for those 3d electronic fliers,the realization of such miniaturized systems remains very challenging,due to the lack of fast-response 3d actuators that can be seamlessly integrated with 3d electronic *** we develop a type of morphable3d mesofliers with shape memory polymer(SMP)-based electrothermal actuators,capable of large degree of actuation deformations,with a fast response(e.g.,~1 s).Integration of functional components,including sensors,controllers,and chip batteries,enables development of intelligent 3d mesoflier systems that can achieve the on-demand unfolding,triggered by the processing of real-time sensed information(e.g.,acceleration and humidity data).Such intelligent electronic mesofliers are capable of both the low-air-drag rising and the low-velocity falling,and thereby,can be used to measure the humidity fields in a wide 3d space by simple hand throwing,according to our *** developed electronic mesofliers can also be integrated with other types of physical/chemical sensors for uses in different application scenarios.
The mechanicallyguidedassembly that relies on the compressive buckling of strate- gically patterned 2d thin films represents a robust route to complex 3d mesostructures in advanced materials and even functional micr...
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The mechanicallyguidedassembly that relies on the compressive buckling of strate- gically patterned 2d thin films represents a robust route to complex 3d mesostructures in advanced materials and even functional micro-devices. Based on this approach, formation of complex 3d configurations with suspended curvy features or hierarchical geometries remains a challenge. In this paper, we incorporate the prestrained shape memory polymer in the 2d precur- sor design to enable local rolling deformations after the mechanical assembly through compressive buckling. A theoretical model captures quantitatively the effect of key design parameters on local rolling deformations. The combination of precisely controlled global buckling and local rolling expands substantially the range of accessible 3d configurations. The combined experimental and theoretical studies over a dozen of examples demonstrate the utility of the proposed strategy in achieving complex reprogrammable 3d mesostructures.
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