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A Pneumatic Generator To Power the Soft Robot Army

No tethers or explosions required, just electric current and water.
Image: IEEE

By now we've all seen and been vaguely creeped out by soft robot technology. These are the robots without "bones," who move and manipulate thanks to the inflation and deflation of chambers contained within rubbery skeletons.

There are many experimental examples of the idea, but a practical realization of it remains hampered by the problem of supplying the required pressures in ways unobtrusive enough to compete with electronic motors and hard-hardware. A Harvard soft-robot that uses explosions to jump seems especially illustrative:

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Researchers from Okayama University in Japan have offered a possible solution. In a video posted last week, the group unveiled a real-life implementation of a pneumatic actuation technology described circa 2013 in a presentation at the Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics International Conference, "A new mobile pressure control system for pneumatic actuators using reversible chemical reactions of water."

As Evan Ackerman notes at IEEE Spectrum, it's not entirely clear what's been going in the intervening two years, but the video is current and appears to be an update.

The technology manages its tether-free functionality thanks to chemical reactions. Current is applied to a fuel cell which catalyzes the electrolysis and synthesis of water. H2O becomes oxygen and hydrogen gas, which supply the needed pressure, and then is converted back into water, relieving pressure. So, it should be possible to exploit the reaction in perpetuity so long as electric current is available.