A team of researchers has come up with a method that utilizes femtosecond lasers to make micromachined joints, showcased by tiny “dancing” micro robots that look like humans.
Inspired by the flexible joints of humans, the scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), of the Chinese Academy of Science, led by Prof. Wu Dong, proposed a two-in-one multi-material laser writing strategy that creates the joints from temperature-sensitive hydrogels as well as metal nanoparticles.
What are femtosecond lasers?
Femtosecond lasers are pulsed lasers that use short, intermittent irradiation. They feature the shortest pulse width, just one quadrillionth of a second (10-15 sec). Unlike a continuous wave laser, the material that’s affected by the pulse is instantly removed.
The technique of femtosecond laser two-photon polymerization, a “true three-dimensional fabrication technique with nanoscale precision,” as the press release from USTC describes it, has been widely used recently to create a number of functional microstructures.
Such microstructures have been showing promise for applications in micro-nano optics, micro sensors, microelectromechanical systems. The study specifically mentions soft grippers, artificial muscles, and wearable devices as possibilities. The challenge lies in “integrating multiple microjoints into soft robots at the micrometer scale to achieve multi-deformation modalities,” as the scientists write in their paper, published in Nature Communications.
One possibility would be to equip terrestrial robots with multiple shape memory alloy joints that can “realize linear/curvilinear crawling, walking, turning, and jumping by laser-inducing,” as the study proposes. Another use would be to create flexible hands with multiple joints as an aid to disabled people. This would allow them to grip different kinds of objects.
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