Soft Electrothermal Meta-Actuator for Robust Multifunctional Control

2025-05-28

AI Summary

Traditional soft electrothermal actuators suffer from unidirectional motion, environmental temperature sensitivity, and slow response due to passive cooling. This work proposes an electrothermal metadevice actuator based on metal/polymer heterogeneous micro-nanofilms, enabling active and precise thermal transport regulation through Joule heating control, engineered directional heat dissipation pathways, and electromechanical coupling modeling. For the first time, it achieves integrated electrocontrolled bidirectional large-strain actuation (≥28%), environmental temperature insensitivity (reduced thermal sensitivity by two orders of magnitude), and active rapid reset (10× faster than conventional counterparts). Operating at only 0.75 W power consumption, the actuator delivers large-angle bending and multi-configuration grasping of complex objects, significantly enhancing the robustness and dexterity of soft robots in dynamic, unstructured environments.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Machine Learning: Active Learning
• Search and Optimization: Metareasoning and Metaheuristics

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Personalized, context-aware and across-device search

Abstract

Soft electrothermal actuators are of great interest in diverse application domains for their simplicity, compliance, and ease of control. However, the very nature of thermally induced mechanical actuation sets inherent operation constraints: unidirectional motion, environmental sensitivity, and slow response times limited by passive cooling. To overcome these constraints, we propose a meta-actuator architecture, which uses engineered heat transfer in thin films to achieve multifunctional operation. We demonstrate electrically selectable bidirectional motion with large deflection ($ geq $28% of actuator length at 0.75 W), suppressed thermal sensitivity to ambient temperature changes when compared to conventional actuators (>100$ imes $ lower), and actively forced return to the rest state, which is 10 times faster than that with passive cooling. We further show that our meta-actuator approach enables extended ranges of motions for manipulating complex objects. Versatile soft gripper operations highlight the meta-actuator's potential for soft robotics and devices.

Problem

• Overcoming unidirectional motion in soft electrothermal actuators
• Reducing environmental sensitivity and slow response times
• Achieving multifunctional control with engineered heat transfer

Innovation

• Engineered heat transfer in thin films
• Electrically selectable bidirectional motion
• Suppressed thermal sensitivity to ambient