TY - JOUR
T1 - A soft robot that adapts to environments through shape change
AU - Shah, Dylan S.
AU - Powers, Joshua P.
AU - Tilton, Liana G.
AU - Kriegman, Sam
AU - Bongard, Josh
AU - Kramer-Bottiglio, Rebecca
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by NSF EFRI award 1830870. D.S.S. was supported by a NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (80NSSC17K0164). J.P.P. was supported by the Vermont Space Grant Consortium under NASA Cooperative Agreement NNX15AP86H.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2021/1
Y1 - 2021/1
N2 - Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft robots, have begun to make shape-changing robots a possibility. However, it is currently unclear how and when shape change should occur, and what capabilities could be gained, leading to a wide range of unsolved design and control problems. To begin addressing these questions, here we simulate, design and build a soft robot that utilizes shape change to achieve locomotion over both a flat and inclined surface. Modelling this robot in simulation, we explore its capabilities in two environments and demonstrate the automated discovery of environment-specific shapes and gaits that successfully transfer to the physical hardware. We found that the shape-changing robot traverses these environments better than an equivalent but non-morphing robot, in simulation and reality.
AB - Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft robots, have begun to make shape-changing robots a possibility. However, it is currently unclear how and when shape change should occur, and what capabilities could be gained, leading to a wide range of unsolved design and control problems. To begin addressing these questions, here we simulate, design and build a soft robot that utilizes shape change to achieve locomotion over both a flat and inclined surface. Modelling this robot in simulation, we explore its capabilities in two environments and demonstrate the automated discovery of environment-specific shapes and gaits that successfully transfer to the physical hardware. We found that the shape-changing robot traverses these environments better than an equivalent but non-morphing robot, in simulation and reality.
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U2 - 10.1038/s42256-020-00263-1
DO - 10.1038/s42256-020-00263-1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85096935059
VL - 3
SP - 51
EP - 59
JO - Nature Machine Intelligence
JF - Nature Machine Intelligence
SN - 2522-5839
IS - 1
ER -