Air‑Powered Robot Mimics Walking Without Electronics

Engineers have created a four-legged soft robot that doesn’t need any electronics to work. The robot only needs a constant source of pressurized air for all its functions including its controls and locomotion systems. Applications include robots that can operate in environments where electronics cannot function such as MRI machines or mine shafts. Soft robots are of particular interest because they easily adapt to their environment and operate safely near humans.

Most soft robots are powered by pressurized air and are controlled by electronic circuits. But this approach requires complex components like circuit boards, valves, and pumps, often outside the robot’s body. These components, which constitute the robot’s brains and nervous system, are typically bulky and expensive. By contrast, the new robot is controlled by a lightweight, low-cost system of pneumatic circuits, made up of tubes and soft valves onboard the robot itself. The robot can walk on command or in response to signals it senses from the environment.

Read a Q&A with the Researcher

UCSD engineer Dylan Drotman tells Tech Briefs where this type of robot can be used, and how it can potentially do much more than just walk.

The robot’s computational power roughly mimics mammalian reflexes that are driven by a neural response from the spine rather than the brain. The team was inspired by neural circuits found in animals, called central pattern generators, made of very simple elements that can generate rhythmic patterns to control motions like walking and running. To mimic the generators’ functions, the team built a system of valves that act as oscillators, controlling the order in which pressurized air enters air-powered muscles in the robot’s four limbs. The researchers built a component that coordinates the robot’s gait by delaying the injection of air into the robot’s legs. The robot’s gait was inspired by sideneck turtles.

The robot is also equipped with simple mechanical sensors — little soft bubbles filled with fluid placed at the end of booms protruding from the robot’s body. When the bubbles are depressed, the fluid flips a valve in the robot that causes it to reverse direction. The robot is equipped with three valves acting as inverters that cause a high-pressure state to spread around the air-powered circuit, with a delay at each inverter.

Each of the robot’s four legs has three degrees of freedom powered by three muscles. The legs are angled downward at 45 degrees and composed of three parallel, connected pneumatic cylindrical chambers with bellows. When a chamber is pressurized, the limb bends in the opposite direction. As a result, the three chambers of each limb provide multi-axis bending required for walking. The researchers paired chambers from each leg diagonally across from one another, simplifying the control problem.

A soft valve switches the direction of rotation of the limbs between counterclockwise and clockwise. That valve acts as what’s known as a latching double pole, double throw switch — a switch with two inputs and four outputs, so each input has two corresponding outputs it is connected to. That mechanism is a little like taking two nerves and swapping their connections in the brain.

The researchers want to improve the robot’s gait so it can walk on natural terrain and uneven surfaces, allowing it to navigate over a variety of obstacles. This would require a more sophisticated network of sensors and a more complex pneumatic system. The team will also look at how the technology could be used to create robots that are in part controlled by pneumatic circuits for some functions such as walking, while traditional electronic circuits handle higher functions.