A Terminator-style robot can survive being stabbed

Sci-fi fans will know that the Terminator was nothing but a ruthless killing machine due to its ability to effortlessly heal itself after damage.

Now, engineers at Cornell University in New York may be well on their way to recreating this remarkable self-healing ability.

Experts have created a robot that can detect when and where it has been damaged and then restore itself on the spot.

The limp little robot, which looks like a four-legged starfish, uses light to detect changes to its surface created by the cuts.

After the researchers punctured one of its legs, the robot was able to detect the damage and self-heal the incisions.

“Our lab is always trying to make robots more durable and agile, so they can work longer with more capabilities,” said Professor Rob Shepherd of Cornell University.

“If you run robots for a long time, they will accumulate damage. And so, how can we allow them to repair or deal with this damage? »

Although not indestructible, Shepherd said the new starfish robot – which is only about five inches long – has properties similar to human flesh.

“You don’t heal well from the burn, or things with acid or heat, because that will change the chemical properties,” he said.

“But we can do a good job of healing cuts.”

The team’s X-shaped robot crawls like a starfish thanks to compressed air being pumped through its body.

It’s covered in a layer of self-healing fiber optic sensors, which are coupled to LED lights capable of detecting tiny changes to its surface.

In fiber optic sensors, light from an LED is sent through a structure called an optical waveguide, which guides the light beam in a certain direction.

Also in the robot is a photodiode, which detects changes in light intensity to determine when and where the material is deformed.

For the actual healing process, they used a polyurethane-urea elastomer for its “skin,” a transparent, elastic material that incorporates hydrogen bonds.

When cut, its exposed sides become chemically reactive, triggering the interlocking polymer chains to reorganize so that it heals.

The researchers say their technology called SHeaLDS – “self-healing light guides for dynamic sensing” – enables a flexible, damage-resistant robot that can self-heal from cuts at room temperature without any external intervention.

During their experiments, they punctured one of the bot’s legs six times, after which the robot was able to detect the damage, self-heal each cut in about a minute, and keep moving.

The robot could also adapt its gait autonomously depending on the damage it detects, such as “the flight reaction of animals in the face of danger”.

The team now wants to integrate the bot with machine learning algorithms that can recognize different “touch events” that could damage it.

“Combined with advances in artificial intelligence, SHeaLDS presents a path to more durable and adaptive robots,” they state in their paper published in the journal Science Advances.

“Damage intelligence is essential in damage-prone environments, such as space suits and monitoring supersonic parachutes in space, as well as applications where device longevity is preferred, such as wearable devices. for human-computer interaction.

Typically, soft robots are constructed from flexible materials, modeled after the soft tissues that humans and other organisms are made of.

The problem is that the soft materials used make them susceptible to damage from sharp objects or excessive pressure.

With self-healing, robots could potentially repair soft-body systems in certain environments, such as spacesuits impacted by space debris or underwater equipment.

Further development of technology could also allow Terminator-style killer robots, designed for the battlefield, to repair damage sustained in battle.