For the past 20 years or more, the Internet has been circulating jokes about "this is how Skynet starts" Matrix "every time a new advancement in robotics hits the news. You can pretty much set your watch to it. And while it's a bit of a tired old trope, people seem to like it.
But we don’t really have to wait for robots to rise. Thanks to soft robotics, robots are already far weirder than anything Arnold Schwarzenegger or Keanu Reeves have ever encountered. Soft robotics is a subgenre of robotics where machines are made not of hard metals and plastics but of soft, pliable materials that mimic flesh and muscle, though not always in the human sense. Some of the stuff that’s been created under this banner is exceptionally weird.
10. Spiderbot corpses
In July 2023, the world saw a place where robots and zombies intersect when scientists turned dead spiders into robots . Strictly speaking, a soft robot can be designed to mimic biological functionality by using things like hydraulics and bladders. Pressurized tubes and hoses can act as limbs and actuators to make something move. Spiders, it turns out, work in much the same way.
Spiders can move their limbs thanks to an internal hydraulic system. They don't have as many muscles as humans, but their blood pressure allows their limbs to move and contract. When a spider dies, its heart stops and its body collapses due to the loss of pressure. This new experiment re-pressurizes a dead body. The scientists filled the corpse with air, allowing the legs to spread and then open again. As the air pressure decreases, the legs begin to close. The end result is like one of those carnival pincer machines you use to try to win a stuffed animal, only it's a corpse that can lift 130 percent own body weight.
So what's the point? Technically, it's cheaper than building a robot to do the same job. And scientists think this darkly named branch of necrobots could have practical applications, including creating and sorting, and even collecting samples in the field, since the spiders are already well camouflaged. Even if they're dead.
9. MIT Creates Soft Gel Hand That Can Catch Fish
Robot hands are some of the oldest and most recognizable robots in the world. Not necessarily the Terminator's titanium skeletal claw, but simply robotic hands used for gripping in a factory setting, often with just two or three fingers. Most of us have seen them, and they are used all over the world.
Historically, these robotic arms have proven to be quite dangerous. Their gripping force is considerable, regardless of what they were designed for. One robot designed to play chess broke my finger 7-year-old rival. Soft robotics has developed a robot with a much softer touch.
In analogy with the tenacious necrospider bot, scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used hydrogel robots , which are so gentle that they can safely grab a fish while it's swimming without causing any harm. It's like being hugged by a flabby squid.
Hydrogel hand, which, as the name suggests, consists mainly of water , is made of flexible materials that are 3D printed to the required size and shape. Water pumped into the fingers allows them to expand and stretch, after which they can be opened and closed. Because it is soft and filled with water, it is well suited for delicate tasks, and catching fish was a kind of proof of concept to demonstrate that the robot is capable of delicate functions.
8. Fruit picking robots with soft hands
Now, if you're wondering what good a robot that can hold fish can do, wonder no more. This area of soft robots does have practical implications, and one of the advances that has come out of this very soft robot idea is fruit picking.
Traditionally, fruit picking has been a human-controlled process. While machines are very useful for harvesting many crops, some require human intervention because the machines of the past were too rough. Fruits like raspberries were too delicate for machines. That's no longer the case.
Back in 2017 Ocado company demonstrated its robotic hands , which are gentle enough to pick up easily damaged items like raspberries or tomatoes. They will be used in the online retailer’s warehouse to pick customer orders. Air pressure controls the robot’s grip, and when combined with artificial intelligence, the robots can observe the produce, determine its ripeness, and more as they pick orders.
In the field, the raspberry-picking robot uses four arms, sensors and a gentle touch on soft plastic grippers to harvest about one kilogram of fruit per hour. It's not that much, but they hope that it will soon quadruple.
7. A soft robot inspired by a starfish can slide under your door
Starfish are interesting creatures, but there’s something odd about them from a human perspective. The same can be said for many sea creatures. They all evolved in a world very different from our surface world, so they seem a little alien to us, especially when we watch them move around. So it’s no surprise that a soft robot inspired by a starfish would look very strange, if not downright creepy.
Harvard Develops Soft Robot from elastomers , which moves by pumping air into its muscles. It can move in several gaits, from walking to gliding, and is also capable of deflate and squeeze under doors or through cracks. Although the model demonstrated by Harvard must be connected to a system of hoses to control the air flow, the potential for future advances that would allow an autonomous soft robot to fit into places that a conventional hard robot cannot seem obvious.
6. A robot with magnetic tentacles can be directed through your lungs
Let's say you're in the hospital because something's wrong with your lungs. The doctors need to get a better idea of what's going on, so what do they do? You're probably expecting a chest X-ray or something. But what if they decide to send a robotic arm into your lungs to take a look around and see how things are going? Especially for this purpose it was developed researchers from the University of Leeds in the UK .
The Magnetic Tentacle Robot, which now appears to be the official name, is a soft-bodied robot made up of interconnected cylinders. It can be through the lungs using a magnet for taking tissue samples or delivering drugs and medications.
If that sounds creepy, don’t worry. That’s how the lead researcher described it. “It’s creepy,” he said, while acknowledging that the plan was to find the least invasive way to explore the deepest, most inaccessible places in the human body. And since the end goal is to save lives, maybe a little creepiness is worth it.
5. Robot cockroaches survive being crushed
You'd be hard-pressed to find many people in the world who like cockroaches. They infest places and litter them with their feces and corpses; they eat through wires; they can survive radiation exposure , and they're notoriously hard to kill. So the robot cockroach is just another layer of creepiness.
Luckily for us, the cockroach robot at least doesn't look like a cockroach or anything physically. But it retains the ability to survive even after someone tries. crush him . He can withstand a load a million times his own weight and still escape after the fact. He can also move very quickly, covering 20 body lengths in just one second, which is another unpleasant feature of the cockroach.
The little creature is basically a piezoelectric panel. When current is applied to it, it expands and contracts, creating movement thanks to a layer of elastic polymer that makes it bend and straighten out again, and a pair of tiny legs underneath. Future plans include adding a gas sensor so it can penetrate tiny spaces and detect dangerous fumes.
4. Stanford researchers have created a soft robotic snake that can grow.
Sot robots have great potential when it comes to saving lives. Take search and rescue, for example. A building collapses after an earthquake or explosion. Something like a soft robotic snake from Stanford can be sent out immediately, snaking through cracks and crevices to find trapped survivors, complete with a camera and even water for the victim. Rescuers will immediately know where to look to increase their chances of saving lives.
You need to remember this when you see how creepy the robotic snake is in real life, able to literally grow and climb over obstacles and overcome them like the crawling tendril of a fast-moving snake. vines . It grows like an unwinding sock, and new material can be added to it. The base or beginning should never move, as the rest of the robot continues to grow.
3. A robot with magnetic slime that can retrieve swallowed objects
A few years ago, magnetic putty was a popular pseudo-toy because it looked like slime that could move on its own. It turns out that it inspired the idea of a new type of soft robot that could potentially be used to inspect a person’s gastrointestinal system and clear blockages. If a patient has swallowed something dangerous — pieces of metal or even watch batteries - a robot with magnetic slime could reach the hazardous material and capture it.
Because it is magnetic, it can be manipulated into various shapes and even passed through very tight spaces. And because of where it can be used and what it looks like, it was thrown out to describe it Name " magnetic poop ".
2. Xenobots are robots made from living frog cells.
We've already seen what happens when you make robots out of something dead, so what about something living? Xenobots — these are robots made of living cells, in this case frog cells.
Scientists have used frog stem cells to create tiny living robots that can perform simple tasks. Skin cells and heart cells, which have nothing better to do together, can push microscopic objects around. They even reassemble themselves if they are damaged.
There is hope that one day xenobots could be used in medicine and even in the world to clean up pollutants from the environment. A future xenobot could deliver medicine directly to the parts of your body that need it. They qualify as neither a machine nor a life form, or maybe they fall into both.
1. Robot finger covered in living skin
In science fiction, you can't shake a tree without a robot that simulates a human falling. From Data on Star Trek before the Terminator and the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica — We really like the idea of creating things in our own image. Besides, it just cheapens the special effects if you pick a human and say it's a robot. It was inevitable that real life would go the way of humanoid robots. And so far, what we've come up with is repulsive at best.
While there are a few hard robots designed in the shape of a human, only soft robotics can get to the point where the words "slightly sweaty" come into play to describe how they look. Japanese researchers have made a soft robot finger and covered it with leather. Real, living fabric.
Because the tissue is alive, the robot can heal yourself from damage. The belief behind the design is that if the robot is more realistic, people will find it easier to interact with it. This could be critical in medical settings or other situations where someone needs to rely on a robot.
The skin needs to be kept moist to prevent it from drying out, since the finger is not attached to anything and has no circulatory system. They also acknowledged that it moves in a very mechanical way. No one has talked about how this would look on a robot's face, or what would happen if the skin-covered robot got an infection and its face rotted away.
In the future, the plan is to build up the base, giving it a nail, sweat glands and hair follicles. Then, maybe someday, it will grow into a full hand.
Оставить Комментарий