Traditional rigid robotic arms simulate the movements of a human arm, and their biggest advantage is high control precision, making them widely used in industry.
Compared to traditional rigid robotic arms, soft robotic arms are safer to interact with humans due to their flexibility and continuous deformation characteristics, and have a very broad application prospect in fields such as medical rehabilitation and home services in the future.
However, existing soft robotic arms can usually only achieve one of the following: extension, unidirectional bending, bidirectional bending, or torsional deformation, without fully utilizing the advantage of the infinite degrees of freedom of soft structures.
Inspired by the arms of molluscs such as octopus tentacles, Professor Ruike Zhao's team at Stanford University has proposed a compliant soft robotic arm based on magnetic drive and Kresling-type origami structural units.
Through ingenious magnetization design and precise magnetic field control, this robotic arm system can achieve a variety of dexterous deformation modes, including omnidirectional bending, extension, and twisting, and demonstrates the ability to grasp and manipulate objects.
Meanwhile, due to the characteristics of magnetic drive remote wireless control, the robotic arm system is very easy to miniaturize. The team further designed a variety of robotic arms with sizes similar to medical catheters, demonstrating their potential for future medical applications.
The research findings, titled "Stretchable origami robotic arm with omnidirectional bending and twisting," were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
