Soft robots may now be coated with materials that enable movement and allow them to operate more purposefully, according to physicists. The study, performed by the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, was published in Science Advances.
The authors of the paper feel that their groundbreaking modeling on ‘active matter’ might be a watershed moment in robotic design. With some further refinement of the idea, it may be feasible to decide the form, mobility, and behavior of a soft solid based on human-controlled action on its top rather than its inherent elasticity.
An average soft material’s surface always compresses into a spherical. Consider how water condenses into droplets: the area of liquids, as well as other soft materials, spontaneously compresses into the lowest surface area available, resulting in a spherical. Active matter, on the other hand, maybe tailored to counteract this propensity. A rubber ball encased in a coating of nano-robots, where the robots are designed to operate in unison to deform the ball into a unique, pre-determined form, is an instance of this in action.
A new era for technology
It is envisaged that active materials will result in a new era of devices with bottom-up functionality. Rather of being directed by a single controller (like today’s factory robotic arms are), these new technologies would be composed of several independent active components that work together to define the machine’s mobility and function. This is similar to how our actual biological parts, such as heart muscle fibers, operate.
Researchers might use this concept to create soft robots with elastic arms that are driven by robots implanted in their “skin”. By covering the surface of nanoparticles with a reactive, active substance, they might also modify the size and form of drug delivery capsules. This, in turn, might have a significant impact on how medicine interacts with bodily cells.
