Insect-like soft robots: is 3D printing changing robotics?

It should not come as a surprise that additive manufacturing is widely used in the field of robotics. 3D printing offers designers the freedom to add new functionalities to their creations. We have covered topics related to AM in robotics before, like the time when researchers created 3D printed sweating robot muscle at the University of Cornell. This time, the big news come from UC San Diego where researches have designed and successfully tested 3D printed insect-like soft robots. Soft robotics is actually a subfield of robotic which deals with the construction of robots from highly compliant materials, similar to those found in living organisms. Using FDM 3D printers, and standard filament materials such as ABS, the researchers created insect-like robots that were significantly cheaper as well as more accessible.

The innovation by engineers at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego comes from rethinking the way soft robots are built: instead of figuring out how to add soft materials to a rigid robot body, the researchers did the reverse. They started with a soft body and added rigid features to key components. The structures were inspired by insect exoskeletons, or rather how they function, such exoskeletons are rigid in some places, but perfectly flexible in others.

Credits: Soft Robotics

Additively manufacturing the insect-like robots

In standard FDM printing, a plastic filament such as ABS or PLA is extruded through a heated nozzle and deposited onto a flat print surface. The innovative flexoskeleton process uses Prusa i3 MK3S or the LulzBot Taz 6 FDM 3D printers, to deposit filament directly onto a heated thermoplastic base layer. This results in high bond strength between the deposited material and the flexible base, yielding improved resistance.