Researchers develop soft, shock-absorbing material to make 3-D printed robots safer
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a new method for 3-D printing soft materials that make robots safer and more precise in their movements. The team’s “programmable viscoelastic material” technique allows users to programme every single part of a 3D-printed object to the exact levels of stiffness and elasticity they want, depending on the task they need for it. For example, after 3-D printing a cube robot that moves by bouncing, the researchers outfitted it with shock-absorbing “skins” that use only a fraction of the energy it transfers to the ground. “These materials allow us to 3-D print robots with visco-elastic properties that can be inputted by the user at print-time as part of the fabrication process,” Rus noted in a statement released by MIT.
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