Chen Gen: Cockroach incarnates as a cockroach robot, crossing a 1.2-meter maze in 6 seconds

Text/Chen Gen

Cockroach, also known as the undead little strong. As one of the oldest insects on the earth, the origin of cockroaches can be traced back to more than 400 million years ago in the Silurian Period, even after the planetary impact, dinosaur extinction, cockroaches are still tenacious life, to this day, coexist with humans.

Although people often avoid cockroaches in life, in fact, even if cockroaches bring many troubles to people's lives, their bionic functions are still worth learning from humans. Know that cockroaches can walk 50 times the length of their body every second; in addition to speed, cockroach antennas and tail whiskers are natural antennas and rearview mirrors, and the bones can resist pressure 800 times higher than their own weight.

The reason why cockroaches can obtain such speed and strength is because of their special body structure. Cockroach exoskeletons are made up of flexible joints that can be elongated and shortened. This body structure not only ensures that the cockroach's hard exoskeleton plays a supporting and protective role, but also increases the elasticity of the body and plays a buffering role.

Now, inspired by cockroaches, research teams from Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen College, the University of Macau, and Carnegie Mellon University have developed cockroach robots that can spin agilely. The electronic cockroach robot in this study can not only turn quickly, but also the trajectory can be precisely controlled, so that it can traverse complex terrain and quickly avoid unexpected obstacles.

In its case, the Cockroach Robot is a curved piezoelectric film driven at a structurally resonant frequency, the body provides forward momentum, and two electrostatic foot pads are used to control its rapid turning movements. In terms of size, the cockroach robot is the same size as a cockroach, equivalent to a large stamp, a thin sheet made of a piezoelectric material called fluorinated polyethylene (PVDF).

In terms of speed, the cockroach robot travels 40 meters per minute, which is the fastest among insect-level robots. The researchers coated PVDF in a layer of elastic polymer, causing the entire sheet to bend so that when the material bends and straightens under an electric field, it pushes the device forward in a "jump" form.

Cockroach robots can achieve high relative centripetal acceleration of 28 body lengths per square second, which is superior to the agility of common insects, including cockroaches, and all flexible robots that have been reported so far. In the experiment, the researchers asked the robot to walk through the Lego maze to test its agile movement ability – the cockroach robot successfully walked through a 120-centimeter-long maze track in 5.6 seconds.

Moreover, compared with large robots of traditional materials, cockroach robots also have strong flexibility, even if they withstand 60 kg of pedaling force, they are still intact. The researchers say such a small, robust and flexible robot could be ideal for search and rescue operations or to investigate other dangerous situations, such as checking for possible gas leaks.

In special cases, such as earthquakes, robots like this can also be used in search and rescue missions after carrying sensors, detecting spaces that cannot be penetrated by large machines or search and rescue dogs, and becoming the "rescue cavalry" of the modern era.