Designing minimal and scalable insect-inspired multi-locomotion millirobots

Abstract

In ant colonies, collectivity enables division of labour and resources^1-3 with great scalability. Beyond their intricate social behaviours, individuals of the genus Odontomachus⁴, also known as trap-jaw ants, have developed remarkable multi-locomotion mechanisms to 'escape-jump' upwards when threatened, using the sudden snapping of their mandibles⁵, and to negotiate obstacles by leaping forwards using their legs⁶. Emulating such diverse insect biomechanics and studying collective behaviours in a variety of environments may lead to the development of multi-locomotion robotic collectives deployable in situations such as emergency relief, exploration and monitoring⁷; however, reproducing these abilities in small-scale robotic systems with simple design and scalability remains a key challenge. Existing robotic collectives^8-12 are confined to two-dimensional surfaces owing to limited locomotion, and individual multi-locomotion robots^13-17 are difficult to scale up to large groups owing to the increased complexity, size and cost of hardware designs, which hinder mass production. Here we demonstrate an autonomous multi-locomotion insect-scale robot (millirobot) inspired by trap-jaw ants that addresses the design and scalability challenges of small-scale terrestrial robots. The robot's compact locomotion mechanism is constructed with minimal components and assembly steps, has tunable power requirements, and realizes five distinct gaits: vertical jumping for height, horizontal jumping for distance, somersault jumping to clear obstacles, walking on textured terrain and crawling on flat surfaces. The untethered, battery-powered millirobot can selectively switch gaits to traverse diverse terrain types, and groups of millirobots can operate collectively to manipulate objects and overcome obstacles. We constructed the ten-gram palm-sized prototype-the smallest and lightest self-contained multi-locomotion robot reported so far-by folding a quasi-two-dimensional metamaterial¹⁸ sandwich formed of easily integrated mechanical, material and electronic layers, which will enable assembly-free mass-manufacturing of robots with high task efficiency, flexibility and disposability.