Micro-fluidics and Flexible Robotics
Curt Bright
Author
12/21/2017
Added
278
Plays
Description
Nebraska researchers find faster and easier methods for making soft robots.
Searchable Transcript
Toggle between list and paragraph view.
- [00:00:00.200](upbeat music)
- [00:00:08.112]In terms of soft robotics, it's a new way
- [00:00:10.032]of thinking about actuation, manipulation,
- [00:00:14.160]grasping of objects and things like that
- [00:00:17.599]where you replace rigid things like metals
- [00:00:21.670]and hard plastics that you see in a traditional
- [00:00:24.211]robotic device with materials that are
- [00:00:27.311]completely soft and compliant.
- [00:00:30.325]Soft robotics as a field is also very
- [00:00:32.470]inspired by invertebrate organisms.
- [00:00:34.712]So replacing bone structure with completely soft materials.
- [00:00:38.480]And so if you've seen any of the things that octopi
- [00:00:40.811]and squid can do in terms of navigating their environment.
- [00:00:44.032]We're very interested in understanding
- [00:00:45.731]the surface chemistry of silicones, because we are
- [00:00:48.531]interested in creating hybrid structures from them.
- [00:00:51.768]And so those would be structures where we combine them
- [00:00:55.032]with materials that have a different stiffness.
- [00:00:58.637]And we got really interested in why
- [00:01:00.192]there was a limitation in what plastics
- [00:01:04.320]you could access, and what was going on
- [00:01:07.851]chemically that was leading to that limitation.
- [00:01:11.072]And so we kind of took a step back and said,
- [00:01:13.331]how can we encourage the surface chemistry to behave
- [00:01:16.611]in a way that gives us very reliable, robust bonds.
- [00:01:20.741]If we can do that, now we can really access
- [00:01:24.171]the sort of breadth of commodity polymers available
- [00:01:27.900]to the community, and we can also simultaneously
- [00:01:33.141]create a reliable interface between them
- [00:01:36.141]that can support microfluidic and soft robotic applications.
- [00:01:39.712]Because that was always the thing is,
- [00:01:41.680]it was limited to a certain number of materials,
- [00:01:45.032]but then beyond that, you really couldn't
- [00:01:47.392]access the pressures, et cetera,
- [00:01:49.741]you needed in microfluidics to make something useful.
- [00:01:53.080]We're giving them a template to
- [00:01:56.643]successfully integrate different materials
- [00:02:00.461]in a way that is very streamlined,
- [00:02:03.040]and that supports practical applications.
- [00:02:06.059]You can imagine disaster environments with difficult
- [00:02:08.720]terrain, search and rescue type applications.
- [00:02:11.672]Grabbing things that you don't wanna bruise,
- [00:02:14.192]and that's of course things like fruit and the like.
- [00:02:17.213]The analogy I use is, would you rather have
- [00:02:19.533]some sort of a soft gripper performing surgery on you,
- [00:02:22.952]or would you rather have the Terminator do that?
- [00:02:24.863]Whenever the Terminator does that, if something goes
- [00:02:27.584]wrong in the control feedback loop, you have a big problem.
- [00:02:30.853]Whenever you have the soft, compliant soft robotic
- [00:02:33.720]gripper doing that, if there's a problem,
- [00:02:35.853]it just sort of deflates like a balloon.
- [00:02:39.133](upbeat music)
The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!
You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.
Log in to post comments
Embed
Copy the following code into your page
HTML
<div style="padding-top: 56.25%; overflow: hidden; position:relative; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1;">
<iframe
style="bottom: 0; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; border: 0; height: 100%; width: 100%;"
src="https://mediahub.unl.edu/media/8913?format=iframe&autoplay=0"
title="Video Player: Micro-fluidics and Flexible Robotics"
allowfullscreen
></iframe>
</div>
Comments
0 Comments