An international team of researchers have created a wriggly "odd wheel" robot that can spontaneously roll up an incline, a playful and seemingly gravity-defying take on biology-inspired mechanics.
The invention isn't, however, actually breaking
any laws of physics. The fine-tuned oscillations of each of its individual
segments allow it to push itself against the ground and even conquer obstacles
as it makes its away up a hill, as detailed in a new preprint spotted by Quanta
Magazine — so while admittedly very clever, it's not a
perpetual motion machine.
This robotic wheel can spontaneously roll uphill by wiggling. https://t.co/yD860kWd2k pic.twitter.com/u5MThObS9c
— Quanta Magazine (@QuantaMagazine) June 16, 2022
Paging Kate Bush
The wheel's trick is counterintuitive. It's
made up of individual motors that are linked together to form it's round structure,
with each module connected to rubber band-loaded plastic arms that are arranged
in such a way to generate opposite torque — an unstable
"nonreciprocal" arrangement that normally wouldn't allow the wheel to
move at all.
Yet the push and pull of the individual motors
generate circular oscillations that cause the wheel to stretch and expand in a
way that allows it to roll uphill. Physics: still undefeated!
Animal Magnetism
It's not entirely unlike what happens in nature.
"Animals are lots of interconnected oscillatory components that have to work together," Nick Gravish, a roboticist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the research, told Quanta.
But it's still unclear if biology is actually
already taking advantage of these kind of processes. It is, however, a
potentially exciting new avenue to learn more about the natural environment,
including the movement of leaderless swarms of animals.
While playful, the technology isn't exactly
going to replace the wheel any time soon.
"If you tried to make a plane using beating wings, you would still be walking or swimming from Normandy to New York," Denis Bartolo, a physicist at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, also not involved in the research, told Quanta.