This tiny robot "beetle" moves forward without any battery

It walks, climbs and carries loads without any battery. Californian researchers have developed a small 88 milligram robot shaped like a beetle that moves with artificial muscles and without any source of energy.

Called "RoBeetle", the machine measures only 15 mm in length, making it "one of the lightest and smallest autonomous robots ever created", said Xiufeng Yang, its inventor. "We wanted to create a robot whose weight and size would be comparable to those of real insects," adds the researcher, author of the article on the subject published this Wednesday in the journal  Science Robotics .

VIDEO: Scientists at the University of Southern California have built an 88-milligram (one three hundredth of an ounce) "RoBeetle" that runs on methanol and uses an artificial muscle system to crawl, climb and carry loads on its back for up to two hours pic.twitter.com/BZ9GKgpJHp

Heat causes contractions

Most robots need motors to move forward. But the smallest batteries weigh 10 and 20 times more than the 50-milligram beetle the team took as a reference animal. Xiufeng Yang and his team therefore imagined an artificial muscular system using methanol (a liquid fuel), capable of providing ten times more energy than a battery of identical mass.

The RoBeetle's artificial muscle is powered by controlled catalytic combustion, a technology that has the potential to enable the development of a diverse new generation of microrobots capable of operating on land, water and air.https: //t.co/hd00GkCMIA

Muscles, made of an alloy of nickel and titanium wires (Nitinol), contract lengthwise under the effect of heat, caused by the contact between the methanol vapor and a catalyst sheathing the wires. The steam heats the wires, the "muscles" contract, then microvalves stop the combustion, allowing the muscles to expand again.

To do what ?

The system allows the beetle's legs to move forward on flat or rough surfaces for two hours in a row - all with 2.6 times its weight on its back. By comparison, "the smallest four-legged battery-powered robot weighs one gram and operates for about 12 minutes," Xiufeng Yang said.

What can these mini-robots be used for? Infrastructure inspections, rescue missions after a natural disaster, even artificial pollinations or environmental monitoring programs… The possibilities are endless. But in the immediate future, the absence of on-board electronics and the fact that it can only move forward continuously limit its potential.

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• California
• Robotics
• Science
• Insect
• Robot