The "Butterfly Bot" is described as the "Fastest Swimming Soft Robot" in the history of the robotics industry research by North Carolina State University. The hair clips women use to secure their hair in place and the butterfly stroke that people use when swimming serve as design inspiration for this new robot.
The robot also mimics the biomechanics of the Manta Ray, a fast-moving aquatic equivalent that travels on the water in a non-traditional manner in contrast to other fish.
Butterfly Bot: Researchers Make the Fastest Soft Robot in the World
Researchers have unveiled the "Butterfly Bot" - the fastest soft robot in existence that outperforms other robots in the water - according to a news release from NCSU. It has a design like a hair clip and focuses on swimming strokes that resemble human movements, such as the butterfly stroke, in which both arms move simultaneously and the body as a whole.
Soft robots cannot swim one body length per second, according to the study's principal author Professor Jie Yin, but its Butterfly Bot offered four times the pace of earlier created ones.
The researchers used a manta ray's biomechanics as inspiration for their study to produce one that would advance soft robotics.
The Science Advances journal released a paper titled "Snapping for high-speed and high-efficient butterfly stroke-like soft swimmer."
According to Professor Yin, the team developed two Butterfly Bots in this study. One focused on speed, and the other on maneuverability that allows for quick turns while swimming.
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Both incorporate a hair clip and a design that draws inspiration from manta rays and mimics the human butterfly stroke. The robot more concerned with speed can swim at a top speed of 3.74 body lengths per second, while the other robot can do sharp turns at a top speed of 1.7 body lengths per second.
"Most previous attempts to develop flapping robots have focused on using motors to provide power directly to the wings," Yin said in an Inceptive Mind report.
According to Yin, the researchers took advantage of bistable wings moved passively by the core body.
"This is an important distinction because it allows for a simplified design, which lowers the weight," Yin said.
Other Swimming Robots
A new era in the development of robots is being ushered in by various breakthroughs that go against popular perceptions of these mechanical beings. According to one research obtained by Interesting Engineering, a Chameleon robot that uses 3D printing technology can replicate its surroundings and copy colors.
Soft robots are a recent innovation from academics focused on manipulating delicate things or accurately recreating many types of live beings, including animals and more.
However, swimming robots also disprove the idea that technology from the early 20th century is dangerous because it can electrocute or short circuit when it falls into the water. It is due to plans for swimming robots, including a large project from NASA dubbed "SWIM" (per SciTechDaily) that wants to transport technology to Jupiter's Europa to discover any living species.
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