Stenus-inspired, swift, and agile untethered insect-scale soft propulsors.

ABSTRACT: Mimicking living creatures, soft robots exhibit incomparable adaptability and various attractive new features. However, untethered insect-scale soft robots are often plagued with inferior controllability and low kinetic performance. Systematically inspired by the swift swingable abdomen, conducting canals for secretion transport, and body setae of Stenus comma, together with magnetic-induced fast-transformed postures, herein, we present a swift, agile untethered millimetre-scale soft propulsor propelling on water. The demonstrated propulsor, with a body length (BL) of 3.6 mm, achieved a recorded specific speed of ~201 BL/s and acceleration of ~8,372 BL/s². The comprehensive kinetic performance of this propulsor surpasses those of previous ones at similar scales by several orders

SUBMITTER: Ke X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10876683 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature