A Controllable Untethered Vehicle Driven by Electrically Actuated Liquid Metal Droplets
A Controllable Untethered Vehicle Driven by Electrically Actuated Liquid Metal Droplets
Liquid metal is an interesting metallic material with many unique properties that can be applied in many applications. Liquid metal droplets can be activated by an external electrical field in aqueous environments, which has led to the development of novel actuators. However, a study on the development and control of liquid metal actuating robots is still absent, which hinders their further applications. In this paper, we report the development of a novel controllable untethered vehicle driven by electrically actuated liquid metal droplets in a sodium hydroxide solution. The simplified dynamic model of the vehicle in sodium hydroxide solution was developed. The vehicle's performance, including translational and rotating locomotion with various speeds, was experimentally evaluated. The vehicle driven by liquid metal droplets possesses many advantages such as working silently, almost wear-free motion, and low power consumed, which has great potential to be applied in liquid metal enabled robotics and automation process such as laboratory automation.
Liquid metal droplet, locomotion, vehicle
2535-2543
Li, Xiangxiang
f3d2082a-8dd1-450b-bf3f-7323efe06f03
Xie, Jie
95f5ab65-2bf0-4a5d-b0e5-1bfa27e1cb34
Tang, Shi Yang
1d0f15c6-2a3e-4bad-a3d8-fc267db93ed4
Xu, Ronald
35f0d242-e88c-43e5-acc9-c480cc884a52
Li, Xiangpeng
73f32905-ad7c-4ce3-93a4-78237b98f4fb
Li, Weihua
e2555036-0e48-425a-afeb-db6ffba5238e
Zhang, Shiwu
da008f91-71fa-42fb-879e-68b91429e1d6
May 2019
Li, Xiangxiang
f3d2082a-8dd1-450b-bf3f-7323efe06f03
Xie, Jie
95f5ab65-2bf0-4a5d-b0e5-1bfa27e1cb34
Tang, Shi Yang
1d0f15c6-2a3e-4bad-a3d8-fc267db93ed4
Xu, Ronald
35f0d242-e88c-43e5-acc9-c480cc884a52
Li, Xiangpeng
73f32905-ad7c-4ce3-93a4-78237b98f4fb
Li, Weihua
e2555036-0e48-425a-afeb-db6ffba5238e
Zhang, Shiwu
da008f91-71fa-42fb-879e-68b91429e1d6
Li, Xiangxiang, Xie, Jie, Tang, Shi Yang, Xu, Ronald, Li, Xiangpeng, Li, Weihua and Zhang, Shiwu
(2019)
A Controllable Untethered Vehicle Driven by Electrically Actuated Liquid Metal Droplets.
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 15 (5), , [8466896].
(doi:10.1109/TII.2018.2870857).
Abstract
Liquid metal is an interesting metallic material with many unique properties that can be applied in many applications. Liquid metal droplets can be activated by an external electrical field in aqueous environments, which has led to the development of novel actuators. However, a study on the development and control of liquid metal actuating robots is still absent, which hinders their further applications. In this paper, we report the development of a novel controllable untethered vehicle driven by electrically actuated liquid metal droplets in a sodium hydroxide solution. The simplified dynamic model of the vehicle in sodium hydroxide solution was developed. The vehicle's performance, including translational and rotating locomotion with various speeds, was experimentally evaluated. The vehicle driven by liquid metal droplets possesses many advantages such as working silently, almost wear-free motion, and low power consumed, which has great potential to be applied in liquid metal enabled robotics and automation process such as laboratory automation.
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Published date: May 2019
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Funding Information:
Manuscript received April 27, 2018; revised July 15, 2018 and August 19, 2018; accepted September 3, 2018. Date of publication September 17, 2018; date of current version May 2, 2019. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 51375468 and Grant 51828503. Paper no. TII-18-0999. (Corresponding authors: Xiangpeng Li and Shiwu Zhang.) X. Li, R. Xu, and S. Zhang are with the Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China (e-mail:,yungui@mail.ustc.edu.cn; xux@ustc.edu.cn; swzhang@ustc.edu.cn).
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© 2005-2012 IEEE.
Keywords:
Liquid metal droplet, locomotion, vehicle
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Local EPrints ID: 481708
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/481708
ISSN: 1551-3203
PURE UUID: 9f335332-b82f-4dd8-bb55-45e9d36b960b
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Date deposited: 06 Sep 2023 16:50
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 04:13
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Contributors
Author:
Xiangxiang Li
Author:
Jie Xie
Author:
Shi Yang Tang
Author:
Ronald Xu
Author:
Xiangpeng Li
Author:
Weihua Li
Author:
Shiwu Zhang
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