It only takes about 3 percent more energy to shine out light,” Kevin Chen says.Īs they prototyped the actuator, they found that adding zinc particles reduced its quality, causing it to break down more easily. We don’t need new actuation, new wires, or anything.
#Bugs that look like lightning bugs for free
“Traditionally, electroluminescent materials are very energetically costly, but in a sense, we get that electroluminescence for free because we just use the electric field at the frequency we need for flying. The researchers use high voltage to create a strong electric field in the soft actuator, and then drive the robot at a high frequency, which enables the particles to light up brightly. This electric field excites the electrons in the zinc particles, which then emit subatomic particles of light known as photons.
However, the zinc particles only light up in the presence of a very strong and high-frequency electric field. They built it using highly transparent carbon nanotubes, which are only a few nanometers thick and enable light to pass through. To fabricate a glowing actuator, the team incorporated electroluminescent zinc sulphate particles into the elastomer but had to overcome several challenges along the way.įirst, the researchers had to create an electrode that would not block light. When a voltage is applied to that cylinder, the electrodes squeeze the elastomer, and the mechanical strain flaps the wing. These durable actuators are made by alternating ultrathin layers of elastomer and carbon nanotube electrode in a stack and then rolling it into a squishy cylinder. These researchers previously demonstrated a new fabrication technique to build soft actuators, or artificial muscles, that flap the wings of the robot. The research was published this month in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. Joining Chen on the paper are EECS graduate students Suhan Kim, the lead author, and Yi-Hsuan Hsiao Yu Fan Chen SM ’14, PhD ’17 and Jie Mao, an associate professor at Ningxia University. The process adds just 2.5 percent more weight without impacting the flight performance of the robot. He and his collaborators accomplished this by embedding miniscule electroluminescent particles into the artificial muscles. Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), the head of the Soft and Micro Robotics Laboratory in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and the senior author of the paper. This is a major step toward flying these robots in outdoor environments where we don’t have a well-tuned, state-of-the-art motion tracking system,” says Kevin Chen, who is the D. But for a tiny, power-constrained robot, we are forced to think about new modes of communication. “If you think of large-scale robots, they can communicate using a lot of different tools - Bluetooth, wireless, all those sorts of things. Now, they’ve shown that they can track the robots precisely using the light they emit and just three smartphone cameras. These robots are so lightweight that they can’t carry sensors, so researchers must track them using bulky infrared cameras that don’t work well outdoors.
The ability to emit light also brings these microscale robots, which weigh barely more than a paper clip, one step closer to flying on their own outside the lab. If sent on a search-and-rescue mission into a collapsed building, for instance, a robot that finds survivors could use lights to signal others and call for help. This electroluminescence could enable the robots to communicate with each other. The tiny artificial muscles that control the robots’ wings emit colored light during flight.
Taking a cue from nature, they built electroluminescent soft artificial muscles for flying, insect-scale robots. These glimmering bugs also sparked the inspiration of scientists at MIT. Fireflies that light up dusky backyards on warm summer evenings use their luminescence for communication - to attract a mate, ward off predators, or lure prey.
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