Live and Kicking Robot Printed by 3D Printer

By Kanika Gupta - 07 Apr '16 15:52PM

Traditional method involves printing each component separately after which it needs to be assembled. However, MIT's novel creation can restructure the production process and reduce the production time significantly, said the university press release.

The paper, co authored by post-doc Robert MacCurdy and Robert Katzschmann, Ph.D along with Youbin Kim, a Harvard undergraduate, was accepted in Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), scheduled to take place this summer.

"Our approach, which we call 'printable hydraulics,' is a step towards the rapid fabrication of functional machines," CSAIL Director Daniela Rus, who oversaw the project, said in the release. "All you have to do is stick in a battery and motor, and you have a robot that can practically walk right out of the printer."

To create a prototype of this single-step process, the research team showcased a six-legged robot printed straight out of the 3D printer that is able to crawl with the help of 12 hydraulic pumps that have been integrated into his body.

"Inkjet printing lets us have eight different print-heads deposit different materials adjacent to one another, all at the same time," MacCurdy explained. "It gives us very fine control of material placement, which is what allows us to print complex, pre-filled fluidic channels."

"As far as I'm concerned," he added, "inkjet-printing is currently the best way to print multiple materials."

The robot that was created is less than six inches and weighed 1.5 pounds.

"If you have a crawling robot that you want to have step over something larger, you can tweak the design in a matter of minutes," MacCurdy suggested. "In the future, the system will hardly need any human input at all -- you can just press a few buttons, and it will automatically make the changes."