Bioinspired tiny robots with flexible motion controls & sustainability

Abstract

Tiny robots and actuators have been in the limelight during the past couple of years due to their immense potential in performing specific tasks which are conventionally unattainable by the traditional-sized robots. They are mainly found in various fields such as biomedical instruments, environmental monitoring, rescue operations and other research purposes. Although miniature robotics is a relatively new and emerging field in the robotics sector, it has already shown promising results as compared to their traditional rigid-bodied counterparts. Their huge advantage is the material they’ve been made of which in general, is dexterous, highly adaptive to the environment and can be made to be stimulus responsive. They are smaller, lighter, and more agile robots which predominantly take design inspirations from nature. In this report, temperature-responsive flexible motion control of bioinspired robot designs with Aluminium as the core material is discussed. A variety of experiments were conducted in combinations with other substances to investigate the deformation properties of the bilayered structures, with the main focus on how they are concurrently actuated with a heat stimulus to activate the thermoresponsive bending effect and observation of their characteristics in relation to the various environmental conditions. Moreover, this report will also highlight some of the applications, limitations, and future prospects of these robots with the aim of determining their feasibility for technological advancements.