The liquid metal robot "T1000" in the film "Terminator" opened the door to the dream of liquid metal application in the field of robots. Gallium-based room temperature liquid metal has unique surface properties and physical and chemical properties. It can achieve various morphological changes such as deformation, movement, separation, and fusion through various energy fields such as electric fields, magnetic fields, and concentration gradient fields, or surface modification. It has shown great application prospects in the fields of MEMS, microfluidics, biomedicine, and robotics, and has attracted widespread attention internationally.
Recently, a joint research group consisting of the research team of Associate Professor Zhang Shiwu of the Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instruments of the University of Science and Technology of China, the research team of Professor Li Weihua of the University of Wollongong, and the research team of Associate Professor Li Xiangpeng of the Center for Robotics and Microsystems at Soochow University has designed a room temperature liquid metal based on gallium The new robot driver, for the first time, realizes a functional wheeled mobile robot driven by liquid metal. Recently, the achievement was published in the journal Advanced Materials under the title "A Wheeled Robot Driven by a Liquid-Metal Droplet" (Adv. Mater. 2018, 201805039).
Liquid metal driven wheeled robot: a) explosion view, b) three-dimensional view, c) schematic diagram of driving principle, d) motion sequence diagram.
Researchers in the joint group skillfully combined high-efficiency liquid metal driving with a variable center-of-gravity mechanism to develop a new liquid metal robot with a simple and compact structure and good driving performance. Researchers have designed an extremely light semi-closed wheel structure with a super-hydrophobic surface to confine liquid metal droplets inside the narrow wheel body; an external electric field is applied to drive the liquid metal motion in the wheel body through a cleverly designed follower miniature electrode holder , And then continuously change the center of gravity of the wheeled robot to drive the wheeled robot to roll. The researchers did a dynamic modeling and analysis of the proposed new liquid metal robot, and experimentally explored the effects of the electrolyte concentration, applied voltage, liquid metal volume, wheel structure and other parameters on the robot's motion performance to obtain the driving motion Best parameter match.
Self-powered wheeled robot motion
By integrating the battery system, the researchers successfully designed a new liquid metal self-driven wheeled mobile robot. This innovative research realizes the first time that the liquid metal driving device moves away from the liquid in the plane. It is expected to inspire a new driving method, which makes up for the traditional robot driving methods (motors, hydraulics, pneumatics, etc.), which have complex structures, large volumes, and low driving energy efficiency. To promote the development of future micro robots and special robot systems.
A joint research group consisting of the University of Science and Technology of China, the University of Wollongong and Suzhou University has begun to study the driving characteristics of liquid metal and its application on robots in recent years, and has made a series of progress. The joint research team designed a miniature car that uses liquid metal droplet arrays as flexible wheels to carry and drive. It integrates power, control circuits, sensors, and liquid metal drive mechanisms into one, and realizes autonomous motion in a 2D plane. The car has no machinery. Transmission has the characteristics of smooth and smooth movement, no noise, low vibration, low cost, easy to manufacture, etc. It is expected to show its skills in automatic production lines and laboratory automation. The results were recently published in "IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics"; in addition, the joint research team discovered for the first time the unconventional motion of liquid metals under the action of external magnetic fields and revealed its internal mechanism. This research has realized the motion control of pure liquid metal without any modification through an external magnetic field, enriched the driving method of liquid metal, and facilitated the large-scale application of liquid metal driving devices. The results were recently published in Soft Matter.