Tighten bottle cap screws and a highly flexible flexible robot opens Coca-Cola for you

In the process of manufacturing robots, flexibly and appropriately combining various properties is a challenging task because these properties are sometimes contradictory. For example, building a robot that is both flexible and strong is not easy, but it is not impossible either.

In a recent study, researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology created a robot that is highly flexible while still maintaining a high degree of tension within its "muscles." Allowing its body to fully twist to complete difficult tasks. The findings were published Jan. 13 in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

Paper address: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document /10016717

In experiments, the researchers demonstrated that the robot was able to remove caps from bottles, producing a twisting motion that was 2.5 times greater than similar robots. In addition, the robot can also load screws.

Unscrew the bottle cap.

Install the screws.

Overview of six-bar tensegrity robots

Tensegrity robots are composed of a rigid frame and a network of flexible cables, which makes them Ability to change shape by adjusting internal tension.

Ryota Kobayashi, one of the authors of the paper and a master's student at Tokyo Institute of Technology, said, "Tensegrity structures are fascinating because of their unique properties - lightweight, flexible and durable. These robots can Working in challenging and unknown environments, such as caves or space, can complete complex movements and work more efficiently."

Tensegrity robots can have a different number of A basic structure of rigid structures (or rods) in which the number of rods varies from 2 to 12 and sometimes more. But generally speaking, robots with more rods are more complex and more difficult to design.

In the study, Kobayashi's team created a tensegrity robot that relies on a six-rod tensegrity module (pictured below). To ensure that the robot received strong twisting force, they used a virtual triangle pattern within which the robot's artificial muscles were placed so that they connected the vertices of the triangle. When the muscle contracts, the vertices of the triangle move closer together.

The picture below shows the actual twisting motion at different angles.

Relying on this technology, the robot uses only 20% of artificial muscle contraction to achieve movement in both directions. A large twisting movement of 50 degrees. Kobayashi exclaimed that his team was surprised by the efficiency of this system, with small contractions of the artificial muscles contributing to large contractions and torsional deformations.

Hiroyuki Nabae, assistant professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology, also participated in this research. He said that due to structural reasons, most six-rod tensegrity robots can only twist slightly, resulting in Movement limited. But it's worth noting that the six-rod robot in the study produced substantial torsional motion, 2.5 times greater than any other six-rod tensegrity robot the researchers could find in the literature.

In addition, in order to exercise the robot's ability to grasp objects, the researchers installed rubber finger cots on the robot and tested its ability to complete the task. As shown in the animation above, the robot arm is lowered onto a Coca-Cola bottle, grasps the bottle cap, twists and lifts the arm, and repeats the gripping and twisting movements. The bottle cap is opened within a few seconds.

##Currently, researchers are considering how to further expand on this technology. Examples include increasing the robot's ability to bend in different directions and incorporating technology that allows the robot to recognize other shapes in its environment. These will help robots better adapt to new environments and complete new tasks better.

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