Robotic Materials Video Members Publications

A versatile jellyfish-like robotic platform for effective underwater propulsion and manipulation

Jellyfish 4
(A) Key features of the HASEL jellyfish robot. (B) Comparison of the propulsion speed against gravity, v, and the cost of transport (CoT) between the HASEL jellyfish robot and other jellyfish-like robots reported in literatures. The HASEL jellyfish robot achieved the fastest propulsion v = 0.4 BL/s (body length per second) and had a relatively low CoT. (C) Sound level measurements of different actuators. Unlike servo motors and hydraulic pumps, the noise level generated by HASEL actuators was comparable to background noise, which makes them virtually noise-free.

Video

Members

Thumb ticker sm hyeong joon joo
Robotic Materials
  • Doctoral Researcher
Thumb ticker sm keplinger christoph geringauflo  send
Robotic Materials, Physical Intelligence
Managing Director

Publications

Robotic Materials Physical Intelligence Bioinspired Autonomous Miniature Robots Article A Versatile Jellyfish-Like Robotic Platform for Effective Underwater Propulsion and Manipulation Wang, T., Joo, H., Song, S., Hu, W., Keplinger, C., Sitti, M. Science Advances, 9(15), American Association for the Advancement of Science, April 2023, Tianlu Wang and Hyeong-Joon Joo contributed equally to this work. (Published)
Underwater devices are critical for environmental applications. However, existing prototypes typically use bulky, noisy actuators and limited configurations. Consequently, they struggle to ensure noise-free and gentle interactions with underwater species when realizing practical functions. Therefore, we developed a jellyfish-like robotic platform enabled by a synergy of electrohydraulic actuators and a hybrid structure of rigid and soft components. Our 16-cm-diameter noise-free prototype could control the fluid flow to propel while manipulating objects to be kept beneath its body without physical contact, thereby enabling safer interactions. Its against-gravity speed was up to 6.1 cm/s, substantially quicker than other examples in literature, while only requiring a low input power of around 100 mW. Moreover, using the platform, we demonstrated contact-based object manipulation, fluidic mixing, shape adaptation, steering, wireless swimming, and cooperation of two to three robots. This study introduces a versatile jellyfish-like robotic platform with a wide range of functions for diverse applications.
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