![]() ![]() ![]() “The currently available subsea robotic arms work well for oil and gas exploration, but not for handling delicate marine life – using them is like trying to pick up a napkin with a metal crab claw,” said co-author David Gruber, Ph.D., who was a Radcliffe Institute Fellow at Harvard in 2017-2018, is a Professor of Biology at Baruch College, CUNY and a National Geographic Explorer. Different types of soft grippers can be attached to the end of the arm to allow it to interact with creatures of varying shape, size, and delicacy, from hard, brittle corals to soft, diaphanous jellyfish. Those movements are translated into the opening and closing of various valves in the system’s seawater-powered hydraulic engine. The arm is controlled wirelessly via a glove equipped with soft sensors that is worn by a scientist, who controls the arm’s bending and rotating by moving their wrist and the grippers by curling their index finger. ![]() The whole system requires less than half the power of the smallest commercially available deep-sea electronic manipulator arm, making it ideal for use on manned undersea vehicles, which have limited battery capacity Other improvements over existing soft manipulators include a compact and robust hydraulic control system for deployment in remote and harsh environments. The apparatus developed by Phillips and his colleagues features bending, rotary, and gripping modules that can be easily added or removed to allow the arm to perform different types of movements based on the task at hand – a significant benefit, given the diversity of terrain and life found in the ocean. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University Play What good is a soft robotic hand without a soft robotic arm to move it? Wyss researchers have now created a soft, modular underwater arm that can help marine biologists study hard-to-reach organisms in the deep sea. “This new soft robotic arm replaces the hard, rigid arms that come standard on most submersibles, enabling our soft robotic grippers to reach and interact with sea life with much greater ease across a variety of environments and allowing us to explore parts of the ocean that are currently understudied,” said first author Brennan Phillips, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor at URI who was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wyss Institute and SEAS when the research was completed. The research is published in Scientific Reports. Insights from this work could potentially have value for medical device applications as well. This system could one day enable the creation of submarine-based research labs where all the delicate tasks scientists do in a land-based laboratory could be done at the bottom of the ocean. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Baruch College, and the University of Rhode Island (URI) uses a glove equipped with wireless soft sensors to control a modular, soft robotic “arm” that can flex and move with unprecedented dexterity to grasp and sample delicate aquatic life. ![]() Now, a new system built by scientists at the Wyss Institute, Harvard’s John A. The soft robotic arm has interchangeable modular units that allow the arm to flex and rotate in response to the hand movements of a human operator wearing a glove equipped with wireless soft sensors. Previously, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and collaborators developed a range of soft robotic grippers to more safely handle delicate sea life, but those gripping devices still relied on hard, robotic submarine arms that made it difficult to maneuver them into various positions in the water. The robotic “arms” on underwater research submarines, however, are hard, jerky, and lack the finesse to be able to reach and interact with creatures like jellyfish or octopuses without damaging them. (CAMBRIDGE, Mass.) - The human arm can perform a wide range of extremely delicate and coordinated movements, from turning a key in a lock to gently stroking a puppy’s fur. A new, modular soft robotic arm gives deep-sea researchers better dexterity for embracing delicate sea life ![]()
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