Future Timeline

(Futurity) Most animals can quickly transition from walking to jumping to crawling to swimming if needed without reconfiguring or making major adjustments. But most robots can’t.

“We were inspired by nature to develop a robot that can perform different tasks and adapt to its environment without adding actuators or complexity,” says study co-first author Dinesh K. Patel, a postdoctoral fellow in the Morphing Matter Lab in the School of Computer Science’sHuman-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

“Our bistable actuator is simple, stable, and durable, and lays the foundation for future work on dynamic, reconfigurable soft robotics.”

The bistable actuator is made of 3D-printed soft rubber containing shape-memory alloy springs that react to electrical currents by contracting, which causes the actuator to bend. The team used this bistable motion to change the actuator or robot’s shape. Once the robot changes shape, it is stable until another electrical charge morphs it back to its previous configuration.

“Matching how animals transition from walking to swimming to crawling to jumping is a grand challenge for bio-inspired and soft robotics,” says Carmel Majidi, a professor in the mechanical engineering department.