CAREER: Additively Manufactured Soft Robots with Integrated Fluidic Logic and Flexible Electronic Interfaces

About This Grant

This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) project will support research to create a new class of made-to-order, 3D-printable soft robots with the capability to tolerate levels of structural deformations that would disable conventional approaches to computing and control. The goal of the project is to be able to rapidly design, fabricate, and deploy a highly customized fleet of robots to respond to unique and urgent missions. These robots would be able to, for example, navigate small, winding spaces in cave systems or debris fields, as might be required for robotic search-and-rescue or exploration. The synergistic use of mechanical intelligence, embedded fluidic circuits, and flexible electronics will enable these new robot capabilities. Mechanical intelligence - the use of robot geometry and material properties to adapt to unexpected conditions - can significantly reduce the amount of computing capacity needed for the robot to accomplish its goals. Fluidic logic uses the movement of fluid in flexible channels within the robot body to convert signals from contact sensors and other external stimuli into commands that turn robot actuators on and off. Fluidic logic can be directly built into the robot body and bend and twist without losing function. Finally, communication and control functions that are best performed electronically will be implemented using flexible and stretchable electronics with a high tolerance for dynamic deformation. The resulting robots will be able to implement sophisticated functionality, while undertaking severe shape changes as needed, to traverse otherwise inaccessible spaces. Comprehensive educational activities incorporate and complement the research, including a new hands-on undergraduate course on printable robotics, and an outreach program to public high schools in Worcester County. This project will create robot architectures that can be quickly 3D printed using additive manufacturing techniques, to produce inexpensive robots that can crawl, jump, swim, and dive through confined spaces, and which can be rapidly customized to incorporate mission-specific details. The research goal is to 3D print robots with integrated fluidic state machines that respond to fluidic sensors and control fluidic actuators. A new class of complementary fluidic logic gates and electro-fluidic memory elements will be developed from multi-stable flexing beam structures with integrated linear actuators and fluidic tubing. Flexible electronic circuits and electro-fluidic interconnects will be integrated into the robots using conductive inks and elastomers. The role of electronics will be minimized and limited to selecting fluidic functionalities, functionalizing fluidic sensors and actuators, and writing programs into fluidic memory. The program will deliver a comprehensive robot architecture for terrestrial, underwater, and amphibious robots, including designs, fabrication processes, modeling and control methodologies, and software. The project will maintain a continuously evolving robot component library and will seek to build a community of researchers and potential users by sponsoring a sequence of increasingly challenging benchmarking scenarios inspired by the Tham Luang cave rescue in Thailand in 2018. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.