4D printing: Fundamentals, materials, applications and challenges

The advent of soft robotics has led to great advancements in robots, wearables, and even manufacturing processes by employing entirely soft-bodied systems that interact safely with any random surfaces while providing great mechanical compliance. Moreover, recent developments in soft robotics involve advances in transparent soft actuators and sensors that have made it possible to construct robots that can function in a visually and mechanically unobstructed manner, assisting the operations of robots and creating more applications in various fields. In this aspect, imperceptible soft robotics that mainly consist of optically transparent imperceptible hardware components is expected to constitute a new research focus in the forthcoming era of soft robotics. Here, the recent progress regarding extended imperceptible soft robotics is provided, including imperceptible transparent soft robotics (transparent soft actuators/sensors) and imperceptible nontransparent camouflage skins. Their principles, materials selections, and working mechanisms are discussed so that key challenges and perspectives in imperceptible soft robotic systems can be explored.

Transparent Soft Actuators/Sensors and Camouflage Skins for Imperceptible Soft Robotics.

4D printing of shape memory polymers

The term “nature-inspired” is associated with a sequence of efforts to understand, synthesize and imitate any natural object or phenomenon either in a tangible or intangible form, which allows us to obtain improved insights into nature. Such inspirations can come through materials, processes, or designs that we see around us. Materials, as opposed to processes and designs found in nature, are tangible and can readily be used without engineering efforts. One such example is that of an aquaporin that is used to filter water. The scope of this work in nature-inspired materials is to define, clarify, and consolidate our current understanding by reviewing examples from the laboratory to industrial scale to highlight emerging opportunities. A careful analysis of “nature-inspired materials” shows that they possess specific functionality that relies on our ability to harness particular electrical, mechanical, biological, chemical, sustainable, or combined gains. A natural plant leaf compared with a highly engineered nature-inspired artifically fabricated leaf. Taking inspiration from natural materials can help shape the future of materials to address sustainability issues. The unique functions that have arisen in living organisms as a result of evolution can help scientists develop novel materials. Saurav Goel from London South Bank University, UK, and his team review a wide range of examples from the laboratory and industry. Such examples include gaining insights from photosynthesis to develop photocatalysts and artificial photosynthesis, from plant roots in order to filter water, from electric eels to guide the conversion of chemical energy to electrical energy and from biomineralization to create ceramics at lower temperatures. Their review also sheds light on subtle differences between the terms ‘inspiration’, ‘mimetics’ and ‘mimicry’ from a design-to-manufacture perspective.

/pdf/nature-inspired-materials-emerging-trends-and-prospects-4fxumx9plv.pdf

Nature inspired materials: Emerging trends and prospects

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/app.50847

3D printing of shape memory polymers

Biologically inspired or mimetic approaches have been traditionally widely adopted in robotic creative design. Generally, the most considered source for biorobotics and soft robotics are animals. Rarely, plants have been considered as a model of inspiration for innovative engineering solutions owing to their inconspicuous motion principles. In this work, a new type of plant-inspired soft robotic gripper was created by reconstructing and simulating the leaf structure and head formation mechanisms of cabbage. Firstly, according to the research reports of biological morphology and curling development mechanism of cabbage leaves, we determined that the flexible leaf with special hierarchical veins is the biological structure basis of curling formation. In the light of this observation, we designed a cabbage-inspired leaf bionic structure using paper substrate as a leaf body and using polylactic acid (PLA) polymer as leaf veins. This bionic design schema of cabbage leaves first has the advantage of ease of manufacture using 3D printing technology. In addition, due to the shape memory effect of PLA, we can control the reciprocal deformation of bionic leaves by controlling the temperature field. Undoubtedly, when two or more pieces of such bionic leaves are assembled together, they can be considered as a soft robotic gripper. Furthermore, we thoroughly studied the embodiment design of this bionic design concept as well as its 3D printing process. Finally, we built a prototype of this cabbage-inspired soft robotic gripper and successfully performed small objects (e.g., spitballs and cylinders) grasping experiments. Obviously, this research achievement first successfully integrated the bionic structure of plant deformation, direct digital manufacturing, and the control of shape memory materials. Secondly, this work realized the unified design of the structure, function, driving, and fabrication of robotics, and further expanded the family of the bionic robot, especially plant-like or plant-inspired robotic solutions.

A 3D Printed Paper-Based Thermally Driven Soft Robotic Gripper Inspired by Cabbage

The theme of the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest in 2018 is to throw the shuttlecocks through the provided rings at height. The shuttlecock is an object made of cotton balls or filled with rice husks, symbolizing prosperity and happiness. For the design and control of robotic throwing mechanism, two aspects of research need to be carried out: selection of initial throwing parameters, aerodynamic behavior of shuttlecocks. Firstly, the influence of the initial throwing speed and the throwing angle on the throwing distance was studied through the kinematics simulation analysis, and the design of the throwing trajectory was further studied. In addition, the influence of air resistance on the flight trajectory was also studied. Finally, for the precise control parameters of the throwing mechanism, the rigid-flexible coupled multi-body dynamics simulation analysis was performed using ADAMS(Automatic Dynamic Analysis of Mechanical Systems) virtual prototype technology. The shuttlecocks throwing experiments conducted on the playing field showed that the design and simulation analysis of the throwing trajectory played a good guiding role in the design and development of the shuttlecocks throwing robot.

Flight Trajectory Simulation of Robotic Throwing Shuttlecock

A robust and accurate simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in working scenarios is an essential competence to perform mobile robotic tasks autonomously. Plenty of research indicates that the extraction of point features from RGB-D data that simultaneously take into account the images and the depth data increases the robustness and precision of the visual odometry method, used either as a self-reliant localization system, or as a front-end in pose-based SLAM. However, due to pure rotation, sudden movements, motion blur, noise and large depth variations, RGB-D SLAM systems often suffer from tracking loss in data association. The front-end tracking process of the ORB-SLAM system requires screening step by step, which is more likely to cause tracking loss. In order to solve the above problems, this work is intended to improve the ORB-SLAM front-end tracking algorithm based on the uniform speed model tracking effective frame and the matching of nearby frame algorithms. Then three datasets selected from TUM datasets with more motion blur are used to further verify the effect of the improved front-end algorithmic architecture. The experimental results suggested that the proposed improved scheme can not only effectively increase the number of tracked frames, but also reduce the amount of computation by about two times under the premise of guaranteeing the path accuracy.

Accuracy enhancement for the front-end tracking algorithm of RGB-D SLAM

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A 3D Printed Paper-Based Thermally Driven Soft Robotic Gripper Inspired by Cabbage

Flight Trajectory Simulation of Robotic Throwing Shuttlecock

Accuracy enhancement for the front-end tracking algorithm of RGB-D SLAM