In a paper titled “Using Explosions to Power a Soft Robot,” Dr. Robert F. Shepard and his colleagues show that a hollow, silicon robot can be made to jump by igniting a mixture of combustible gases within cavities built into its body.
To make this motion possible, the robot’s three limbed body is lined with tubes, filled with a mixture of methane and oxygen. As the gas mixture moves through the tubes, an electrical spark ignites the gas and the subsequent combustion causes the robot to move one of its limbs. If all three limbs are activated simultaneously, the robot can jump more than thirty times its height.
The experiment conducted in this paper proved two things: One, that setting off explosions inside a silicon-based soft robot moves it much faster than just using ordinary compressed gas, and two, that a silicon-based soft robot can also survive multiple internal explosions.
Researchers believe that soft robots may be useful in search and rescue missions, because they can maneuver around obstacles much more effectively than their hard-bodied counterparts, and their low cost for production makes them a cheap and disposable alternative.
Let’s just hope they don’t blow up the rescue-ee.
Images and Video Courtesy of New Scientist