{"id":355951,"date":"2022-02-21T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationorigins.com\/?post_type=selected&p=355951"},"modified":"2022-02-21T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-02-21T09:00:00","slug":"jelly-and-salt-to-make-self-healing-materials-for-robotics","status":"publish","type":"selected","link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/en\/selected\/jelly-and-salt-to-make-self-healing-materials-for-robotics\/","title":{"rendered":"Jelly and salt to make self-healing materials for robotics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Researchers have developed self-healing, biodegradable, 3D-printed materials that could be used in the development of realistic artificial hands and other soft robotics applications, writes the University of Cambridge in this press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The low-cost jelly-like materials, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, can sense strain, temperature and humidity. And unlike earlier self-healing robots, they can also partially repair themselves at room temperature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0results<\/a>\u00a0are reported in the journal\u00a0NPG Asia Materials<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The material detects when it’s damaged <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Soft sensing technologies could transform robotics, tactile interfaces and wearable devices, among other applications. However, most soft sensing technologies aren\u2019t durable and consume high amounts of energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIncorporating soft sensors into robotics allows us to get a lot more information from them, like how strain on our muscles allows our brains to get information about the state of our bodies,\u201d said David Hardman from Cambridge\u2019s Department of Engineering, the paper\u2019s first author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of the EU-funded SHERO project, Hardman and his colleagues have been working to develop soft sensing, self-healing materials for robotic hands and arms. These materials can detect when they are damaged, take the necessary steps to temporarily heal themselves and then resume work \u2013 all without the need for human interaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been working with self-healing materials for several years, but now we\u2019re looking into faster and cheaper ways to make self-healing robots,\u201d said co-author Dr Thomas George-Thuruthel, also from the Department of Engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Healing at room temperature <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Earlier versions of the self-healing robots needed to be heated in order to heal, but the Cambridge researchers are now developing materials that can heal at room temperature, which would make them more useful for real-world applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe started with a stretchy, gelatine-based material which is cheap, biodegradable and biocompatible and carried out different tests on how to incorporate sensors into the material by adding in lots of conductive components,\u201d said Hardman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers found that printing sensors containing sodium chloride \u2013 salt \u2013 instead of carbon ink resulted in a material with the properties they were looking for. Since salt is soluble in the water-filled hydrogel, it provides a uniform channel for ionic conduction \u2013 the movement of ions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cheap to create<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When measuring the electrical resistance of the printed materials, the researchers found that changes in strain resulted in a highly linear response, which they could use to calculate the deformations of the material. Adding salt also enabled sensing of stretches of more than three times the sensor\u2019s original length, so that the material can be incorporated into flexible and stretchable robotic devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The self-healing materials are cheap and easy to make, either by 3D printing or casting. They are preferable to many existing alternatives since they show long-term strength and stability without drying out, and they are made entirely from widely available, food-safe, materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a really good sensor considering how cheap and easy it is to make,\u201d said George-Thuruthel. \u201cWe could make a whole robot out of gelatine and print the sensors wherever we need them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incorporating it in wearables <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The self-healing hydrogels bond well with a range of different materials, meaning they can easily be incorporated with other types of robotics. For example, much of the research in the Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory<\/a>, where the researchers are based, is focused on the development of artificial hands. Although this material is a proof-of-concept, if developed further, it could be incorporated into artificial skins and custom-made wearable and biodegradable sensors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This work was supported by the\u00a0Self-HEaling soft RObotics (SHERO)<\/a>\u00a0project, funded under the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme of the European Commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also interesting: <\/strong><\/em>The robots from Hyperion Robotics print sustainable concrete in 3D<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2084,"featured_media":355955,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":""},"categories":[8553],"tags":[7738,23489,9224,53271,55802,46284],"location":[55977],"internal_archives":[],"class_list":["post-355951","selected","type-selected","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital","tag-3d-printing-en","tag-robotics","tag-robots-en","tag-self-healing-material","tag-self-healing-robots","tag-university-of-cambridge","location-united-kingdom"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"featured_img":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/JHag1dgF-XIZFq0wo-VIk3rOX0-hand-g7cf6c9611_1920-1.jpg","coauthors":[],"author_meta":{"author_link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/author\/mauro-mereu\/","display_name":"Mauro Mereu"},"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 4 years ago","modified":"Updated 4 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on February 21, 2022","modified":"Updated on February 21, 2022"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on February 21, 2022 10:00 am","modified":"Updated on February 21, 2022 10:00 am"},"featured_img_caption":"\u00a9 Pixabay","tax_additional":{"category":{"linked":["Digital<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Digital<\/span>"],"slug":"category","name":"Categories"},"post_tag":{"linked":["3D printing<\/a>","robotics<\/a>","robots<\/a>","self-healing material<\/a>","self-healing robots<\/a>","University of Cambridge<\/a>"],"unlinked":["3D printing<\/span>","robotics<\/span>","robots<\/span>","self-healing material<\/span>","self-healing robots<\/span>","University of Cambridge<\/span>"],"slug":"post_tag","name":"Tags"},"language":{"linked":["EN<\/a>"],"unlinked":["EN<\/span>"],"slug":"language","name":"Tags"},"post_translations":{"linked":[],"unlinked":[],"slug":"post_translations","name":""},"location":{"linked":["United Kingdom<\/a>"],"unlinked":["United Kingdom<\/span>"],"slug":"location","name":"Locations"},"internal_archives":{"linked":[],"unlinked":[],"slug":"internal_archives","name":"Internal Archives"}},"series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/selected\/355951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/selected"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/selected"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2084"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355951"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=355951"},{"taxonomy":"internal_archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/internal_archives?post=355951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}