The Fastest, Soft Robot Created

Engineers have developed an energy-efficient, soft robot that swims four times faster than its peers.

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Researchers at North Carolina State University have quadrupled the speed of soft robots in water by mimicking stingray technology. The "Butterfly Robot" is named after the "butterfly" style of movement. The researchers developed two types of butterfly boat. One was built specifically for accelerated swimming and could reach an average speed of 3.74 body lengths per second. The second was designed to be highly agile, able to make sharp turns to the right or left. This maneuverable prototype moved at a speed of 1.7 body lengths per second.

Butterfly robots move with the help of bistable wings, i.e. wings with two stable states. The wing looks like a hairpin. It is stable until you apply a certain amount of energy to it (by bending it). When the impact reaches a critical point, it takes a different form, which is also stable. Butterfly robots have hairpin-shaped bistable wings attached to a soft silicone body. Users control the transition between two fixed states in the wings by forcing air into chambers inside the soft body. As these chambers inflate and deflate, the body bends up and down, causing the wings to wobble with it.

The fast robot has a single "motor" that drives both wings. This makes it very fast, but makes it difficult to turn left or right. The agile robot uses two drives at the same time, the two drives are connected side by side. This design allows you to move both wings and only one. In this way, the robot is able to make circular turns.