Small-scale soft-bodied robot
Supplementary movies from the paper "Small-scale soft-bodied robot with multimodal locomotion," authored by Wenqi Hu, Guo Zhan Lum, Massimo Mastrangeli & Metin Sitti, published in Nature
doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature25443
Videos
1. Jellyfish-like swimming: The video sequentially shows jellyfish-like swimming in slow motion (Fig. 2a), visualization of the fluid vortices produced by the jellyfish-like swimming locomotion as traced by 45 μm beads (Fig. S37), and arrest of the jellyfish-like swimming locomotion when B flipping is stopped.
2. Meniscus climbing and landing: The video sequentially shows the robot climbing a water meniscus (Fig. 2b) and landing on a solid platform (Fig. 2c).
3. Rolling and walking: The video sequentially presents rolling (Fig. 2e) and straight walking (Fig. 2f), demonstrates steered walking, and a comparison of using rolling or walking to cross a gap.
4. Crawling: The video presents the relationship between the traveling wave produced on the soft robot body and the crawling direction (Fig. 2g), and demonstrates that the robot’s crawling direction can be flipped by reversing the direction of the traveling wave.
5. Jumping: The video first presents the directional jumping locomotion shown in Fig. 2h. Subsequently, it presents the straight jumping locomotion, which is induced solely via the shapechange mechanism. It further shows how the straight jumping locomotion can be affected by different vertical magnetic field spatial gradients. Finally, it presents a control experiment in which a robot that has a homogenous magnetization profile is unable to jump, as opposed to a robot with a harmonic magnetization profile.
6. Multimodal locomotion: The video presents the sequence of Fig. 3, whereby the soft robot navigates through different terrains by combining all the discussed locomotion modes.
7. Multimodal locomotion in a surgical phantom: The video presents the soft robot navigating through a stomach phantom by a combination of meniscus climbing, landing, rolling and jumping, also shown in Fig. 4a. In the video, the robot moves very quickly at around 00:34 because it is pulled by unwanted magnetic gradient-based pulling forces generated by the spatial gradients of B.
8. Ultrasound-guided locomotion: The video shows ex-vivo ultrasound-guided locomotion of the soft robot (Fig. 4b and Fig. S44). Jellyfish-like swimming, rolling and crawling are respectively demonstrated in three different biological phantoms.
9. Cargo transport: The video demonstrates gripping, transportation and release of a cargo by the soft robot (Fig. 4c).
10. Cargo delivery: The video demonstrates selectively triggered cargo release by a modified soft robot (Fig. 4d and Fig. S45).