Soft Robots use Sweaty Fingers to Cool Themselves

Jan-29-20 The rubbery materials used in creating soft robots often trap heat, but conventional cooling mechanisms such as fans and radiators are incompatible with soft robot construction.

To solve this problem, scientists decided to mimic human's ability to cool themselves by sweating.

To achieve this ability each robot finger was made with two different kinds of resin, the body used a resin that shrinks with heated above 40 degrees C, while the back had a resin that expanded when heated above 30 degrees C.

Below 30 degrees, the finger's pores remain closed, but at higher temperatures, the material on the back of each finger expands, letting the water in each finger sweat out.

This allowed the robots to cool roughly six times faster than their non-sweating counterparts.

More Info about this Invention:

[IEEE.ORG]
[THEVERGE.COM]

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