Researchers at Cornell University have developed microscale robots that can fold into three-dimensional shapes and crawl using a novel design based on kirigami, a cousin of origami. These tiny robots, measuring less than 1 millimeter in size, are printed as a 2D hexagonal “metasheet” but transform into preprogrammed 3D shapes with the help of electricity.
The team’s paper, titled “Electronically Configurable Microscopic Metasheet Robots,” appears in Nature Materials. The robot’s versatility is due to its unique design, which enables it to fold, expand, and locomote. The researchers have previously created microrobotic systems that can actuate their limbs, pump water via artificial cilia, and walk autonomously.
The inspiration for the kirigami robot came from living organisms that can change their shape. However, traditional robots are usually static in their overall shape once they’re fabricated. The metasheet robot is a hexagonal tiling composed of approximately 100 silicon dioxide panels connected through over 200 actuating hinges, each about 10 nanometers thin.
When electrochemically activated via external wires, the hinges form mountain and valley folds, allowing the robot to change its coverage area and locally expand and contract by up to 40%. The robot can adopt various shapes depending on which hinges are activated, potentially wrapping itself around other objects and then unfolding itself back into a flat sheet.
The researchers are already planning the next phase of metasheet technology, envisioning the combination of their flexible mechanical structures with electronic controllers to create ultra-responsive “elastronic” materials. These materials could have properties that would never be possible in nature, ranging from reconfigurable micromachines to miniaturized biomedical devices and materials that can respond to impact at nearly the speed of light.
The possibilities for these active metamaterials are vast, with the potential to form the basis for a new type of intelligent matter governed by physical principles that transcend what is possible in the natural world.
Source: https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-versatile-microscale-robots-3d.html