Light-Responsive Soft Actuators: Mechanism, Materials, Fabrication, and Applications

Soft robots are those that can move like living organisms and adapt to the surrounding environment. Compared with traditional rigid robots, the advantages of soft robots, in terms of material flexibility, human–computer interaction, and biological adaptability, have received extensive attention. Flexible actuators based on light response are one of the most promising ways to promote the field of cordless soft robots, and they have attracted the attention of scientists in bionic design, actuation implementation, and application. First, the three working principles and the commonly used light-responsive materials for light-responsive actuators are introduced. Then, the characteristics of light-responsive soft actuators are sequentially presented, emphasizing the structure strategy, actuation performance, and emerging applications. Finally, this review is concluded with a perspective on the existing challenges and future opportunities in this nascent research frontier.

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Dragonfly Inspired Smart Soft Robot

10.1101/2020.04.28.067033 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Vardhman Kumar ◽

Ung Hyun Ko ◽

Yilong Zhou ◽

Jiaul Hoque ◽

Gaurav Arya ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Environmental Remediation ◽

Stimuli Responsive ◽

Complex Environments ◽

Soft Robots ◽

Responsive Materials ◽

Environmental Perturbations ◽

Integration Strategies ◽

Soft Actuators ◽

Harsh Conditions

Recent advancements in soft robotics have led to the development of compliant robots that can exhibit complex motions driven by living cells(1, 2), chemical reactions(3), or electronics(4). Further innovations are however needed to create the next generation of soft robots that can carry out advanced functions beyond locomotion. Here we describe DraBot—a dragonfly-inspired, entirely soft, multifunctional robot that combines long-term locomotion over water surface with sensing, responding, and adaptation capabilities. By integrating soft actuators, stimuli-responsive materials, and microarchitectural features, we created a circuitry of pneumatic and microfluidic logic that enabled the robot to undergo user- and environment-controlled (pH) locomotion, including navigating hazardous (acidic) conditions. DraBot was also engineered to sense additional environmental perturbations (temperature) and detect and clean up chemicals (oil). The design, fabrication, and integration strategies demonstrated here pave a way for developing futuristic soft robots that can acclimatize and adapt to harsh conditions while carrying out complex tasks such as exploration, environmental remediation, and health care in complex environments.

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A Study on Robot Technologies Used in Intelligent Systems with Nanotechnology Perspective

AJIT-e Online Academic Journal of Information Technology ◽

10.5824/1309-1581.2012.3.004.x ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 3 (8) ◽

pp. 59-74

Author(s):

Aylin TUTGUN ÜNAL

Keyword(s):

Human Computer Interaction ◽

Intelligent Systems ◽

Robot Systems ◽

Living Organisms ◽

Computer Interaction

In this research the robot technologies used in the integration of intelligent systems of the nanotechnology have been studied in 3 chapters: According to this research, various examples have been given 1 for the robot systems with human characteristics, 2 for robotizing of other organic living organisms, 3 for robot systems designed for other materials and the purpose used in different areas of the robot systems that are mentioned in the perspective of the human-computer interaction have been discussed.

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Research on Intention Flexible Mapping Algorithm for Elderly Escort Robot

Scientific Programming ◽

10.1155/2021/5541269 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2021 ◽

pp. 1-14

Author(s):

Xiaoyu Qiu ◽

Zhiquan Feng ◽

Tao Xu ◽

Xiaohui Yang ◽

Ya Hou ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Fault Tolerance ◽

Human Computer Interaction ◽

Elderly Care ◽

The Elderly ◽

Interaction Process ◽

Mapping Algorithm ◽

Surrounding Environment ◽

Mapping Scheme ◽

Easy Operation ◽

Computer Interaction

With the development of science and technology and the intensification of the aging of the world’s population, elderly care robots have begun to enter people’s lives. However, the current elderly care system lacks intelligence and is just a simple patchwork of some traditional elderly products, which is not conducive to the needs of the elderly for easy understanding and easy operation. Therefore, this paper proposes a flexible mapping algorithm (FMFD), that is, a gesture can correspond to a flexible mapping of multiple semantics in the same interactive context. First, combine the input gesture with the surrounding environment to establish the current interactive context. Secondly, when the user uses the same gesture to express different semantics, the feature differences formed due to different cognitions are used as the basis to realize the mapping from one gesture to multiple semantics. Finally, four commonly used gestures are designed to demonstrate the results of flexible mapping. Experiments show that compared with the traditional gesture-based human-computer interaction, the proposed flexible mapping scheme greatly reduces the number of gestures that users need to remember, improves the fault tolerance of gestures in the human-computer interaction process, and meets the concept of elderly caregiver robots.

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