EPFL Developing Connectors for Modular Floating Robots

EPFL Developing Connectors for Modular Floating Robots

This is an artistic rendering of a project that's being developed at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne). The Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS) is working on a robot (yes, that's totally a robot) made up of soft, floating modules that connect to each other through electroadhesion . Electroadhesion , of course, is engineering magic that works by using very high voltages to generate a charge differential between two surfaces, causing them to stick together. The nice thing about electroadhesion (besides the fact that it works even on non-conductive surfaces ) is that it's flexible, making it an ideal dynamic connector for soft , modular robots. Where EPFL is really going nuts, though, is with these soft robotic modules that float : It might be a bit of a stretch to call these things robots, but what to think about here is the potential of electroadhesive con...

Full article: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hard...