A team of Hong Kong scientists has unveiled a strange robot with a consistency close to custard. Able to evolve in narrow environments, it could in particular be used to recover objects swallowed by accident.
A flexible device
If there are elastic robots capable of manipulating objects and robots ” fluids capable of navigating in narrow spaces, devices combining these two properties are much less common.
In the context of work published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, Li Zhang and his colleagues from thehong kong university mixed magnetic neodymium particles with borax (a common household detergent) and polyvinyl alcohol (resin) to create a gooey, malleable robot that could be controlled by an external magnetic field. As such a mixture obviously turns out to be toxic to the human body, a silicon-based coating has also been added.
In experiments involving different organ models, the magnetic device was able to wrap around a small battery and move through gaps just a few millimeters wide. Switching easily from one task to another (it can be stretched wide or coiled like an octopus’ arm to grab an object), the robot automatically regains its physical integrity when it is cut into pieces.
Track the robot
While improving the robot’s autonomy is one of the researchers’ main goals, the next steps will be to find a way to track its movements in real time and to ensure that its silicon envelope is perfectly impermeable, conditions essential to consider its use in humans.
” If you want to control something inside the human body to do a specific task, you need to constantly know where it is and how it behaves. », comments Pietro Valdastri of the’university of leedsto UK.
According to Zhangthe robot currently moves at a speed comparable to that of an insect, but modifying the magnetic control mechanism could make it possible to increase it significantly.
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