The PennZone

PITTSBURGH ~ Carnegie Mellon University engineers have made a breakthrough in softbotics and the fields of robotics, electronics, and medicine with the development of a soft material with metal-like conductivity and self-healing properties. This material is the first to maintain enough electrical adhesion to support digital electronics and motors.

The research team, led by Professor Carmel Majidi of Mechanical Engineering, introduced the material in three applications: a damage-resistant snail-inspired robot, a modular circuit to power a toy car, and a reconfigurable bioelectrode to measure muscle activity on different locations of the body.

The self-healing conductive material was embedded with a battery and electric motor to control motion on the snail robot. When the team severed the conductive material, its speed dropped by more than 50%. However, due to its self-healing properties, when manually reconnected it recovered 68% of its original speed.

More on The PennZone

• We are Talker Study: 64% of AI Users Have Bought From a Brand AI Introduced, as The Invisible Shortlist Reshapes Brand Discovery
• One in three Americans may have lost track of retirement savings from a previous job
• Political Concerns Drive US Investors to Golden Visas
• The Truth Makers: The Quantum Lie Turns a Presidential Bribery Video Into a Crisis of Reality
• 2027 Health Insurance Open Enrollment

The material can also act as a modular building block for reconfigurable circuits. In their demonstration, one piece of gel initially connected the toy car to a motor. When split into three sections and connected one section to a roof-mounted LED, they were able to restore the car's connection to the motor using two remaining sections.

Lastly, it was demonstrated that this material can be reconfigured for electromyography (EMG) readings from different locations on the body. This opens doors for tissue-electronic interfaces like EMGs and EKGs using soft, reusable materials.

Professor Majidi hopes that this work will lead to robots made entirely of soft gel-like materials that could be used for monitoring hard to reach places such as water quality or mold in homes. The research was published in Nature Electronics on March 9th 2023.

---

Show All News | Disclaimer | Report Violation