these are soft robots their
structural components are built not out
of metal or
wood but flexible materials like plastic
tubing
but how do they work and why would you
want
a soft robot in the first place this
video was sponsored by kiwiko
check out their robots at the end of the
show
so i came up to stanford to meet zach
hammond and his
soft robot how's it going all right you
want to tip it
so is the idea that the robot could walk
this way
totally yeah so you can kind of chain
these rolls together to kind of
roll around in any environment they call
this punctuated rolling locomotion where
and it's
kind of stuck on a face until it tips
over and now it's on a new face
and it can then continue to move its
center of gravity once that center of
gravity
exits the support polygon or the base
then it
tips over one of the edges of the face
this is a different soft robot made out
of flexible tubing
it was designed to mimic the way a
turtle walks
where diagonally opposite legs move
together
it's powered entirely by compressed air
and perhaps most impressive it requires
no
electronics all of the circuitry is
pneumatic
and this means the robot can be used in
places like mines where electronics
could spark explosions
or in the strong magnetic fields around
mri machines
but why would you want a soft robot in
the first place
one of the things that i like to do is
just to take the robot and kind of like
beat it up a little bit show how it's
compliant compressive
well because they're safer if you'd like
to take a whack at it you know feel free
but i i don't think this is your work i
don't want to break it oh no feel free
go for it
for operation around humans there's not
much damage a soft robot can do to you
i can stand on these yep this is a
pretty crazy
compliant robot because the the
fundamental
structure of this robot is compliant
there's only
uh some maximum force that it could ever
exert on me
so it's inherently safe to be operating
around people
could we make it fall and have maybe
inside it
yeah yeah we could do that for sure just
watch your head
yep if i go over here if you're there
yeah we can do that
all right let's try it
here comes
[Music]
well that's not bad at all is it i can
try another shape that's supposed to
open up one of the faces so you can
jump out of it quickly okay i haven't
tested it in a little while so
sure i don't know how it's going to go
but let's try this there you go that's
your face right there to your right and
you can
exit the truss from that face boom
perfect just that easy
did you build this by yourself me and
one other grad student built this entire
thing ourselves basically
and how long did it take we did it in
about a month i want to say like
actually constructing everything
and was it tricky i mean were you sewing
that stuff yep we sewed this
all ourselves the main structural
members of this robot
are fabric tubes inflated with air
yeah so these red tubes are a nylon
fabric
and then internally there is a
polyethylene tube that provides the
air tightness the tubes are inflated to
about
six psi above atmospheric so it's almost
one and a half atmospheres each tube
passes through pairs of rollers
connected to a motor
the rollers pinch the tube so it bends
kind of like a
pinched straw and the rods and then we
have this like high friction material
wrapped around the rods
and then that coupled with the fact that
we have this pressurized tube that's
kind of pushing the membrane of the tube
into the rollers prevents us from
slipping by driving the motor
it changes the lengths of the tubes kind
of like
when a clown creates a twist in a
balloon
and then folds that balloon into a
balloon animal
the difference between what the clown
does and what we do is that there's a
some passage of air between
adjacent segments of the tube so that as
the robot drives around we're not
pressurizing
the segments of the tube this robot is
made of
four inflated tubes each one connected
to a pair of motors
forming triangular sides we also think
that they kind of look like sausage
links when put together which is why
we've named
these robots after different sausages so
this one's called polish
that one over there is chorizo there's a
linguista and a kielbasa over there
somewhere
so what shape is the overall thing it's
an octahedron yeah we call it octahedron
because if you drew
lines between these kind of kinematic
joints here it would create an
octahedral shape
driving the motors together allows the
robot to dramatically change
shape it can get very tall or
short and squat but since the tubes
themselves don't change in length the
overall perimeter of the robot the
length of all the edges combined doesn't
change so
the robot is considered iso parametric
how do you feel when you watch those
boston dynamics videos
oh i love those videos they're so cool
the boston dynamics robots are kind of
terrifying like isn't the idea with soft
robots to like convince people that
robots are good and soft and
kind and fresh that's definitely true
yeah there are some things that you can
do to
rigid systems to make them feel like
compliant systems based on how you're
controlling the motors
but yeah they're definitely you know
heavy expensive and can
be dangerous if they're not used
correctly the hard robots we're used to
are strong and precise their actions are
accurate
and repeatable but they are also heavy
and they can't really change their
volume as dramatically
but this robot is still capable of
carrying a heavy load
uh so i have a gui in matlab that
enables me to just put in the
positions that i want the robots to move
in inches and then send them out there's
some other functionality i have some
like stored
configurations to send to the robot soft
robots also have the advantage of
shape changing they can become tall to
go over obstacles or
short to fit under obstructions so if
there's some
rock that it didn't see or that it
wanted to roll over
it could simply do that in the
compliance of the tubes
would simply just bend around that
disturbance
do you imagine robots like this doing
work in space
oh yeah definitely so one of the nice
things about these types of structures
is that they can shrink down their
volume very drastically
and because volume on rockets is such an
expensive premium
um being able to have a robot that can
pack down small for transport is very
valuable
so nasa was at one point looking into
truss robots for exactly that reason
and they've contacted us since we've
made this robot to explore
different ideas for space exploration
projects
so one of the things that they're
thinking about doing is deploying robots
underneath a sheet of ice so they're
going to drill through this sheet of ice
and then deposit a robot through what is
a kind of a small
diameter hole and so if you can have a
robot that can change its volume very
drastically or be disassembled
and then reassembled to form like a much
larger structure
then you can have large robots that are
able to fit through these tight spaces
and be deployed in kind of difficult to
access areas is this a little bit like
an octopus
is that is that how you can think of it
there there is some connection there
because they they use their
shape-changing ability and their
compliance to squeeze through
tight passageways and then also to wrap
their body
around objects so for example they can
open jars with their tentacles and one
of the things that we want to use this
robot for
is grasping and manipulating objects
this robot is even capable of picking
objects up off the ground
we'll try that and see if we can grab it
because of the compliance of the the
tubes it has a natural ability to grasp
and manipulate objects because
as it does so the tubes bend ever so
slightly which increases the contact
area
and distributes evenly the forces that
are exerted on that object
so i mean is the biggest risk if it if
it pops
yeah that's a that's a big risk i mean
you obviously
need the the compressed air for your
structure and so if you have a leak
oh
you don't have a robot right it's a
pretty big drawback of
soft robots you know some things that
you could do to mitigate that would be
to have on board a small compressor
which isn't there to provide power to
the robot but would help you maintain
pressure if there were any small leaks
when you tell someone you're working on
a robot and they see this
does it defy expectations totally they
have no idea what it is i'm talking
about until
i show them like a video or picture i
think most people's conception
of soft robots was really expanded by
the movie big hero 6
and i think they did a great job in kind
of showcasing what a soft robot can do
and why they're useful
and kind of just popularizing the notion
it's really great to have
compliance built into any mechanical
system especially as we want robots to
work closer and closer with humans
so i think we'll definitely see more
soft robots in the future
hey this video was sponsored by kiwiko
and since i was up in the bay area i got
to visit kiwiko headquarters
which was mostly empty because kovid but
i met with a few designers who make the
awesome projects that come
in kiwico crates oh boys and i'm not
gonna lie
it kind of seems like the best job i was
in awe of some of the ideas they have
brought to life
dude that's cool look at that you know
kiwiko offers eight
subscription lines for kids of all ages
and everything you need comes right in
the box so that means
no running out to the store each crate
not only gets kids making and having fun
but also learning about steam
concepts kiwico believes that kids are
often better at thinking big
and as a father of three kids i know
that to be true
if i can get them learning little things
every day that can all add up to a big
perspective change in how they see the
world
so for viewers of this video kiwico is
offering 50 off your first month of any
crate
just go to kiwico.com veritasium50
i will put that link down in the
description so i want to thank kiwiko
for sponsoring veritasium
and i want to thank you for watching