Industrial facilities such as chemical factories, gas terminals, and power plants can contain kilometers of piping that require meticulous inspection for leaks and defects prior to operation. This is a costly and time-consuming process that sometimes requires dismantling sections of pipe. While current internal inspection devices such as borescopes, “pipe inspection gadgets,” … [Read more...] about Large-Scale Vine Robots for Industrial Inspection: Developing a New Framework to Overcome Limitations With Existing Inspection Methods
Pneumatic systems
Tensegristats: Lightweight Untethered Morphing Robots
Flexible and shape-shifting structures are common in nature. Creating shape-shifting machines using rigid components requires complex design work. Soft robotic attempts are closer to the muscular hydrostats they mimic but are slow and inefficient untethered and do not generally allow large-scale shape change between forms. Here we present the idea of “tensegristat” robots in … [Read more...] about Tensegristats: Lightweight Untethered Morphing Robots
