This penny-sized soft robot paddle with hydrogel fins
Making water-going robots has long been a goal of engineers.
Robots modeled resemble tuna, suckerfish, octopuses, and other creatures have been sighted.
In a brand-new paper published this week in Science Robotics, they explain the construction and use of these robots.
Even more, some hydrogels can adapt to changes in pH, temperature, ionic strength, solvent type, electric and magnetic fields, light, and other environmental factors.
Naturally, such robots' designs are always being revised and improved.
The porous hydrogel paddles of the brand-new free-floating robots created by Korea University covered in a webbing of nanoparticles or "wrinkled nanomembrane electrodes," which are nanoparticles.
The robot's body was constructed with penny-sized onboard electronics.
A motor or actuator located inside the body can apply various electric potential voltages across the hydrogel.
Making water-going robots has long been a goal of engineers.
The researchers noted that their WNE actuator-based soft aquabots could be built without a standard transmission system or high-voltage converter,
two factors that have severely constrained the downsizing of soft robots.