Cornell University researchers are building soft robots with “robot blood” that is both hydraulic fluid that provides motive force and at the same time a battery that stores and delivers energy required to power the robots. The resulting body configurations are ideal for both slow long-term ocean exploration and inspection of narrow urban spaces like pipes and buried infrastructure.
“There are a lot of robots that are powered hydraulically, and we’re the first to use hydraulic fluid as the battery, which reduces the overall weight of the robot, because the battery serves two purposes, providing the energy for the system and providing the force to get it to move,” says project leader Rob Shepherd, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
“So then you can have things like a worm, where it’s almost all energy, so it can travel for long distances.”
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