Photothermal‐Driven Crawlable Soft Robot with Bionic Earthworm‐Like Bristle Structure

Abstract

Remote stimuli‐responsive movable soft robots without the need for complex 3D deformation processes and specific working environments is an unsolved problem and urgent need. In this work, under the inspiration of mother nature, a novel strategy of simple combination of the bionic bristles structure and the photothermal‐driven reversible shape change liquid crystal polymer (LCP) actuator is proposed to work out this difficulty. The combination structure is designed as unique three parts with two bionic bristle units at the two ends and one LCP unit in the center with a soft connection between them. After matching the driving force and the resistance, the prepared soft robot can realize the earthworm‐like unidirectionally crawl on the paper surface upon near‐infrared light irradiation through the contracting and stretching of LCP with a maximum average speed of 4.4 mm min−1. What's more, the crawling speed of the soft robot can be regulated by varying the irradiation distance of near‐infrared light or the length of the actuators. This strategy realizes the type of remote wireless control soft robot and has potential application ability in other soft robots with various demands.

Keywords

• bionic bristles
• crawlable earthworms
• photothermal-driven liquid crystal polymers
• soft robots
• unidirectional forces