Shape programmable magnetic pixel soft robot

Ran Zhao; Houde Dai; Hanchen Yao; Yafeng Shi; Guopeng Zhou

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e11415

Shape programmable magnetic pixel soft robot

Heliyon. 2022 Nov 5;8(11):e11415. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e11415. eCollection 2022 Nov.

Authors

Ran Zhao^{1

2

3}, Houde Dai^{1

3}, Hanchen Yao^{1

3}, Yafeng Shi², Guopeng Zhou^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Quanzhou Institute of Equipment Manufacturing of Haixi Institutes, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Quanzhou 362200, China.
² Zhongyuan-Petersburg Aviation College, Zhongyuan University of Technology, Zhengzhou 450000, China.
³ Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou 350000, China.
⁴ School of Electrical and Control Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan 030000, China.

Abstract

Magnetic soft robots (MSRs) can achieve controllable shape-morphing by magnetic programming to the magnetic elastomer. However, the magnetization profile is usually implemented on a continuous region and is unchangeable. The deformation and function design of MSR hence is limited. This study presents a programmable magnetic pixel soft robot (MPSR). By encapsulating liquid-metal/NdFeB composites into a Silicone shell, the thermal-magnetic response functional film with lattice-structure is fabricated, with the highest pixel resolution of 1 × 1 mm². A piece of laser-assisted magnetic programming equipment is developed to implement magnetic encoding on discrete regions of the film. Therefore, a mathematical model is proposed to help calculate the magnetic codes according to the preset end shape. At last, several pixel-structure MPSRs are prepared and tested. Experimental results show that using the magnetic encoding technique, we can reconfigure the deformations and functions of the robot. This study provides a basis for the programmed shape regulation and motion design of the soft robot.

Keywords: Liquid-metal; Magnetic encoding; Magnetic pixel; Programmable shape; Soft robot.