Darbois Texier, B. , Ibarra, A., & Melo, F.
Why invent something you can borrow from nature? Creating the right motion for a robot to move well through sand or snow is a tricky problem, but one that nature solved long ago. By borrowing from biology, a new robot with a rotating coiled tail can move through loose powders at a good clip, making it useful for search and rescue missions or exploration.
Many bacteria use rotation to help them move through gooey fluids, powered by propeller-like tails. Similarly, seeds of some plants such as geraniums have a coiled appendage called an awn that helps push them deeper into the soil.
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Enthused by these natural approaches, Baptiste Darbois Texier and his colleagues at the University of Santiago in Chile 3D-printed a plastic robot that can twist itself through granular substances. It is 12 centimetres long, with a hemispherical head and a helical tail. When moving, the head stays still as the tail rotates.
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“Moving into granular media is made difficult because there is no cohesion between grains,” says Texier, just like the wheels on your car rotate when stuck in sand without moving the vehicle forwards. The rotation of the coil cuts through this fine material, reducing drag and enabling the robot to progress.
Robots like this could be used for activities such as collecting environmental information in areas that are inaccessible to people – for example, in disaster zones, battlefields or space – says Wonjung Kim at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea, who studies helical locomotion in seed awns.
Journal reference: Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.068003
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