US engineers have developed a 3D-printed, four-legged robot that is capable of walking on rough surfaces such as sand and pebbles, the media reported on Wednesday.
\nResearchers led by Michael Tolley, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), will present the robot at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation scheduled for May 29 to June 3 in Singapore, Xinhua news agency reported.<\/p>\n
The soft-legged robot could be used to capture sensor readings in dangerous environments or for search and rescue, researchers said.<\/p>\n
According to the UCSD, the legs of the robot are made up of three parallel, connected sealed inflatable chambers or actuators, 3D-printed from a rubber-like material.<\/p>\n
The chambers are hollow on the inside, so they can be inflated. On the outside, the chambers are bellowed, which allows engineers to better control the legs\u2019 movements.<\/p>\n
The breakthrough was made thanks to a high-end printer that allows researchers to print both soft and rigid materials within the same components.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea came from nature. In nature, complexity has a very low cost,\u201d Tolley said. \u201cUsing new manufacturing techniques like 3D printing, we\u2019re trying to translate this to robotics.\u201d<\/p>\n
IANS<\/strong><\/p>\n Picture source: Alamy<\/strong><\/p>\n Picture used for illustrative purposes alone<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US engineers have developed a 3D-printed, four-legged robot that is capable of walking on rough surfaces such as sand and pebbles, the media reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29,43],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4289,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4287\/revisions\/4289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}