Tech Briefs Magazine - December 2022 - 25

probable location and orientation of objects
under the pile. Then FuseBot finds
the most efficient way to remove obstructing
objects and extract the target
item. This reasoning enabled FuseBot to
find more hidden items than a state-ofthe-art
robotics system, in half the time.
This speed could be especially useful in
an e-commerce warehouse. A robot tasked
with processing returns could find items in
an unsorted pile more efficiently with the
FuseBot system, said Fadel Adib, Associate
Professor in the Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science and
director of the Signal Kinetics group in the
Media Lab. " We were able to do this because
we added multimodal reasoning to
the system - FuseBot can reason about
both vision and RF to understand a pile of
items, said Adib.
A recent market report indicates that
more than 90 percent of U.S. retailers
now use RFID tags, but the technology is
not universal, leading to situations in
which only some objects within piles are
tagged. This problem inspired the
group's research.
With FuseBot, a robotic arm uses an
attached video camera and RF antenna
to retrieve an untagged target item from
a mixed pile. The system scans the pile
with its camera to create a 3D model of
the environment. Simultaneously, it
sends signals from its antenna to locate
RFID tags. These radio waves can pass
through most solid surfaces, so the robot
can " see " deep into the pile. Since the
target item is not tagged, FuseBot knows
the item cannot be located at the exact
same spot as an RFID tag.
Algorithms fuse this information to
update the 3D model of the environment
and highlight potential locations
of the target item; the robot knows its
size and shape. Then the system reasons
about the objects in the pile and RFID
3D-Printed Insect-Inspired Robots
A new method that doesn't require special equipment works in minutes to create soft,
flexible, 3D-printed robots.
University of California, San Diego, CA
I
nstead of adding soft materials to a
rigid robot body, researchers have
taken a soft body and added rigid features
to key components. The structures
were inspired by insect exoskeletons,
which have both soft and rigid
parts. The " flexoskeletons " could lead
to the creation of a new class of soft,
bioinspired robots.
The new method allows for the construction
of soft components for robots in a
small fraction of the time previously needed
and for a small fraction of the cost.
Large groups of flexoskeleton robots could
be built with little manual assembly and a
library of Lego-like components could enable
robot parts to be easily swapped.
The flexoskeletons are made from
3D-printing a rigid material on a thin sheet
that acts as a flexible base. They are printed
with various features that increase rigidity
in specific areas - again inspired by insect
exoskeletons, which combine softness and
rigidity for movement and support.
One flexoskeleton component takes 10
minutes to print and costs less than $1.00.
Flexoskeleton printing can be done on
most low-cost commercially available printers.
Printing and assembling a whole robot
takes less than two hours.
Tech Briefs, December 2022
tag locations to determine which item to
remove, with the goal of finding the target
item with the fewest moves. This reasoning,
as well as its use of RF signals,
gave FuseBot an edge over a state-of-theart
system that used only vision.
FuseBot could be applied in a variety
of settings because the software that performs
its complex reasoning can be implemented
on any computer. In the near
future, the researchers are planning to
incorporate more complex models into
FuseBot so it performs better on deformable
objects. Beyond that, they are interested
in exploring different manipulations,
such as a robotic arm that pushes
items out of the way. Future iterations of
the system could also be used with a mobile
robot that searches multiple piles
for lost objects.
For more information, contact Abby
Abazorius at abbya@mit.edu; 617-2532709.
One
of the flexoskeletons developed with the new 3D-printing method. (Image: UCSD)
The researchers surveyed a range of
materials until they found the right flexible
surface to print the flexoskeletons on
- a sheet of polycarbonate. Careful observation
of insect behavior led them to
add features to increase rigidity.
The ultimate goal is to create an assembly
line that prints whole flexoskeleton
robots without any need for hand
assembly. A swarm of these small robots
www.techbriefs.com
could do as much work as one massive
robot on its own - or more. The researchers
plan to make the designs available
to researchers at other institutions
as well as high schools.
Watch the robot in action on Tech
Briefs TV at www.techbriefs.com/tv/
flexoskeletons. For more information,
contact Ioana Patrin genaru at ipatrin@
ucsd.edu; 858-822-0899.
25
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Tech Briefs Magazine - December 2022

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