Stanford Seminar - Embodied Intelligence for Extreme Environments

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Embodied Intelligence for Extreme Environments

Embodied intelligence for extreme environments involves designing robots that can withstand extreme conditions such as pressure, temperature, and radiation.
Traditional robotic exploration is limited by the need for advanced controls, sensors, and computers, which can be costly, heavy, and power-hungry.
Soft robotics offers an alternative approach by using compliant materials and structures to achieve strength and adaptability.

Elastomeric fluidic actuators and gecko-inspired adhesives are two complementary technologies for gripping objects in space.
A model was developed to design soft robotic grippers that maintain even surface pressure distribution across an arbitrary object.
Researchers developed a gripper with gecko-inspired adhesives that outperforms similar grippers without the adhesives.
The gripper's performance depends on the size of the object being gripped, with better performance on larger objects.
The gripper enables new grasp options, such as hybrid grasps where one finger provides normal force and the other provides surface adhesion.
The gripper can lift objects with forces comparable to state-of-the-art grippers, but at lower pressure, which maintains flexibility and scalability.
The researchers scaled up the gripper design for potential use in capturing and refueling satellites.
The gripper uses a sequential deployment mechanism to conform to unknown surfaces, but stability becomes more challenging with more joints.
Surface friction has a positive effect on stabilizing grasps, allowing the gripper to engage and torque down onto surfaces without losing contact.
The gripper's compliant design allows it to wrap around arbitrary shapes without damaging them.

Vine robots offer a potential solution for exploring coral reefs due to their simple deployment mechanism and ability to squeeze through tight spaces.
Vine robots are soft, inflatable robots that can navigate through cluttered environments.
The robots are made of a flexible material that can buckle and deform under low pressure.
This flexibility allows the robots to interact with their environment and reinforce their structure.
The robots can be trained on known examples to improve their performance in unknown environments.
Vine robots can be used for gripping and anchoring in constrained spaces.

Cold arm is a project that aims to reduce the thermal power consumption of robotic arms in cold environments.
Cold arm uses bulk metallic glasses that maintain their elasticity and flexibility at very cold temperatures.

The Ice Node project is a drifting robotic vehicle designed to study ice shelves and reduce uncertainty in sea level rise projections.
Ice Node uses its buoyancy to control its depth and drift along currents beneath the ice shelf.
The vehicle lands on the ice using a pyrotechnically severed ballast and compliant legs to absorb any differences in ice conditions.
After a period of data collection, Ice Node detaches from its legs and returns to neutral buoyancy to drift back out to open water.

The speaker thanks everyone who contributed to their work, including collaborators from their PhD and JPL projects, as well as colleagues at Stanford.