A soft matter computer for soft robots

Abstract

Despite the growing interest in soft robotics, little attention has been paid to the development of soft matter calculation mechanisms. The integration of computation directly into flexible materials is not only necessary for the next generation of fully flexible robots, but also for intelligent materials to go beyond the stimulus-response relationships and adopt the intelligent behaviors observed in them. biological systems. This article describes the inexpensive and easy-to-develop calculation mechanisms for software robots. The SMC building block is a conductive fluid receiver (CFR), which maps a fluidic input signal to an electrical output signal via electrodes embedded in a flexible tube. SMCs can perform analog and digital calculations. The potential of SMCs is demonstrated by integrating them into three software robots: (i) a Softworm robot was controlled by an SMC system that generated the necessary control signals for three distinct gaits; (ii) a set of reflexes that can be programmed by adjusting the parameters of the CFR has been given to a flexible gripper; and (iii) a two degree of freedom flexural actuator has been switched between three distinct behaviors by varying a single input parameter. SMCs are an inexpensive way to integrate computation directly into flexible materials and an important step towards fully flexible autonomous robots.