A robot image. What do you see? A comfortable, rugged steel machine designed to overcome the fragility of living organisms? Unfortunately, this particular quality is now threatening to dump the planet at very solid electronic waste. What if, instead, our prevailing machines are increasingly designed to degrade and disappear – like life?
To study in Science progressThe researchers formulated a robotic arm, a stirring -like control unit, from gelatin pork and vegetable cellulose – strong materials enough to work but sensitive enough to deteriorate in the rear fertilizer. After the test, both oregelikic structures are disintegrated in the soil within weeks.
Biocynotic robots are often located under the umbrella of soft robots, which are inspired by the creations of the most flexible nature. “The field originated from materials and chemistry instead of the traditional robots that come from mechanical engineering,” says Germany, Florian Hartmann of the Max Planck Institute for Smart Systems in Stuttgart. However, many preliminary, early soft robots still depend on artificial polymers that remain pollution.
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Pingong Wei, a material scientist who works with natural polymers at the University of Westeliks in Hangzhou, cooperated with his friend Chuang Chang, a robot engineer now at the University of Vodan in Shanghai, to collect robots for the new study. Zhang has long remembered robots fascinated and sparked the idea of creating a robot himself. “This is when I thought, why don’t you use the materials with which it works to build one?”
They started with cellulose layers derived from cotton pulp, then added glycerin to flexibility and dry the layers to strength. “Celemose is cheap and easy to assemble,” says Wei. To build sensors, researchers used the connected gelatin extracted from pork, where the flow of ions changes when the material is extended, determined or pressed. Then they folded flat films and sensors in 3D structures.
Wei and Zhang found that the control unit and robotic arm stood up to thick use and a week of lack of activity. Finally, both buried them in a 20 -sided hole near the campus. Within eight weeks, the machines were almost completely.
“The way in which researchers enables engineering something very rigid but very soft,” says Eileen Romley, a robotian engineer, also at the Max Planck Institute for Smart Systems. Romlie nor Hartmann participated in the study.
Wei and Zhang imagine robots such as dealing with dangerous waste and then melting; They also suggest robots that help surgeries and then break safely inside the body. But it is important to note that technology is in very early stages.
“If we really want to have a sustainable robot that comes out in nature, we also need to think about electronics, energy supplies, or even batteries, which can be analyzed,” says Hartmann.