Two engineers, from the Paul M Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder and Purdue University, have created an unusual pair of robots that he says could change how we inspect the most complicated machines in the world.
This robotic duo is as odd as it is ingenious: tiny, insect-inspired robots paired with inflatable vine-like robots that grow like plants and curl like snakes. These high-tech helpers can navigate a complex maze of machinery and squeeze through the tightest of spaces – such as the guts of a jet engine – to potentially perform non-destructive evaluation faster, cheaper and better than ever before.
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‘If you look at the infrastructure around us, there are a lot of buildings, bridges, dams and machines that have all of these little nooks and crannies,’ said assistant professor Kaushik Jayaram of CU Boulder. ‘They need very careful, regular inspection and maintenance, but there’s just no easy, cost-effective way to get in.’
Jayaram said there is also an element of public safety involved. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, nearly 15 per cent of aviation accidents are caused by mechanical malfunction. In just this year alone, the National Transportation Safety Board has reported 94 aviation accidents, 13 of which have been identified as fatal incidents.
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‘When it comes to tasks such as flying, where human safety is paramount, we need aircraft technology and machinery to work 100 per cent of the time,’ Jayaram said. ‘Our research is one of the efforts to address these concerns using the advantages of robotics.’
The work, in collaboration with assistant professor Laura Blumenschein at Purdue University, has drawn interest from the US Air Force Research Laboratory, which has awarded the two researchers a three-year, US$1.4million grant to prove these small robots can work together to produce big results.
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But as unlikely as this robotic team might seem, Jayaram believes they have the perfect blend of ‘offence’ and ‘defence’ to get these dirty and delicate jobs done.
First on the roster is Jayaram’s mCLARI microrobot (pictured above). This tiny machine – weighing in at less than a gram – can climb, squeeze through cracks the size of a penny and move with a millimetre precision. However, due to its small stature, it struggles to carry any extra weight. Large batteries and electronics are incompatible with the little robot, and without them, it can’t travel long distances or manoeuvre tight spaces effectively.
That’s where its vine-like teammate (pictured below), developed by Blumenschein, comes in. This robot can inflate like a party favour, allowing it to carry more weight and conform to the environment. In Jayaram’s vision, the inflatable snake can act as mCLARI’s personal Uber driver, negotiating constraints of tight spaces and dropping the tiny robot directly at the site of inspection.
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Once in location, Jayaram said, the mCLARI robot, fitted with cameras and miniature evaluation sensors, can gather and transmit real-time data for offline analysis. When it’s done, it can hop right back on the snake-like robot and the team can make the winding journey back home, saving hours of evaluation time and thousands of dollars in service costs in the process.
‘Each of the robotic systems has its own pros and cons,’ said Jayaram. ‘By combining the strengths of these two robots, we’re overcoming the disadvantages to create a single collaborative system that can give us quick insight into these compact and confined spaces.’
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But this tiny squad of robots is capable of much more than just inspection. In fact, Jayaram dreams of a day where his insect and vine-inspired robotic friends can be deployed in a variety of scenarios where being small, agile and adaptive are a premium. Maybe one day this robotic team can play a vital role in environmental monitoring to detect high-risk wildfire zones and prevent ecological damage. Or maybe they can be used in disaster response situations – like a collapsed building – to help save human lives.
‘These small, confined crevices and spaces are actually way more ubiquitous than we originally thought. Even in the medical arena – if we shrink these robots even further, make them shapeshift and use biocompatible materials, maybe our technology can one day be crawling inside our bodies, detecting and releasing blood clots or taking measurements,’ Jayaram said. ‘We get very excited when we think about the future. If we can build systems that can effectively navigate the world and combine them with sensors, we can do a lot.’