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The human arm can perform a wide range of extremely delicate and coordinated movements, ranging from the manipulation of a key in a lock to the gentle stroking of a puppy's fur. The robotic "arms" of underwater research submarines, however, are hard, jerky and lack finesse to reach and interact with creatures such as jellyfish or octopus without damaging them. Previously, the Harvard University-based Wyss Institute for Biological Engineering and its collaborators had developed a range of flexible robotic forceps to safely handle delicate marine life, but these grippers still relied on on rigorous robotic submarine arms that made their maneuver difficult. positions in the water.
Now a new system built by scientists at the Wyss Institute, the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) at Harvard, Baruch College and the University of Rhode Island (URI) uses a fitted glove of sensors a modular and flexible robotic "arm", able to flex and move with unprecedented dexterity to capture and taste the delicate aquatic life. This system could one day allow the creation of underwater research laboratories where all the delicate tasks accomplished by scientists in a terrestrial laboratory could be carried out at the bottom of the ocean. The information from this work could also be useful for medical device applications. The research is published in Scientific reports.
"This new flexible robotic arm replaces the standard rigid and rigid arms of most submarines, allowing our flexible robotic forceps to reach and interact with marine life with greater ease in a variety of environments and Brennan Phillips, Ph.D., first author, is an assistant professor at the URI and a postdoctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute and SEAS when the research was completed.
The device developed by Phillips and his colleagues includes flexion, rotation and grip modules that can be easily added or removed to allow the arm to perform different types of movements depending on the task at hand – a significant advantage, given the diversity of the grounds and the diversity of the grounds. life found in the ocean. Other improvements over existing software manipulators include a robust and compact hydraulic control system for deployment in remote and difficult environments. The entire system requires less than half the power of the smallest commercially available offshore electronic manipulator arm, making it ideal for use on manned underwater vehicles, whose battery capacity is limited.
The arm is controlled wirelessly by a glove equipped with soft sensors, worn by a scientist who controls the flexion and rotation of the arm by moving their wrist and forceps by looping their index finger. These movements result in the opening and closing of various hydraulic engine valves powered by the seawater system. Different types of soft grippers can be attached to the end of the arm to allow it to interact with creatures of varying shapes, sizes and finesse, from hard and brittle corals to soft and diaphanous jellyfish.
"The currently available underwater robotic arms work well for oil and gas exploration, but not for handling delicate marine life.Their use is tantamount to trying to take a towel with a metal crab claw," he said. co-author David Gruber, Ph.D., professor of biology at Baruch College, CUNY and explorer of National Geographic. "The glove control system allows us to have a much more intuitive control of the flexible robotic arm, such as how we would move our arms when scuba diving."
The robotic arm and gripping system have been field tested from a submarine accommodating 3 people in the unexplored deep ecosystems of the Fernando de Noronha Archipelago, Brazil. He has successfully interacted with or collected delicate deep sea and marine organisms such as glass sponges, sea cucumbers, branched coral and floating bioluminescent tunicates. Different modules were quickly and easily exchanged in the arm to better maneuver the forceps to reach the target organism, or when a module is damaged, without it being necessary to disassemble the entire arm.
"This low-power, glove-controlled software robot was designed for the future marine biologist, who will be able to conduct scientific research well beyond the limits of SCUBA diving and with means comparable to or better than those of diving." 39, a human diver, "said Robert Wood, Ph.D., lead author of the article, is one of the founding members of the Wyss Institute as well as Professor Charles River in Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS.
Researchers continue to refine their designs and incorporate non-invasive DNA and RNA sampling capabilities into the arm system's actuation units, with the goal of capturing marine life fragile, perform a series of experiments in an "underwater laboratory," and release them safe and sound.
"The goal of the Wyss Institute is to disseminate scientific discoveries in the real world, but sometimes we need to understand how to modify the scientific laboratory itself in order to be able to get it out of the academic world in order to be able to. this opportunity for the big funds and the advances they describe could have a much broader value, even for medical and surgical applications, "said Donald Ingber, MD, Ph.D., founding director of the Wyss Institute, he is He is also Professor of Vascular Biology at HMS (Judah Folkman) and Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children's Hospital and Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS.
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