In the past few years, we have covered plenty of bug bots here. MIT researchers are giving these types of flying robots a boost with a new fabrication technique to produce low-voltage, power dense soft actuators for them.
This new method enables building soft actuators that operate at lower voltages with more carrying capacity. These artificial muscles will also have fewer defects. As they explain, during their experiment:
20-layer actuator, which requires less than 500 volts to operate, exerted enough power to give the robot a lift-to-weight ratio of 3.7 to 1, so it could carry items that are nearly three times its weight.
[HT]