Tough, Self-Healing and Somatosensitive Soft Robot

The physically compliant and gentle interactivity of soft robots has opened new possibilities of robot tasks like dexterous manipulation, soft material grasping, and human-interactive applications. However, the softness causes mechanical vulnerability to damage like puncture, tendon cuts, degradation, and delamination. To overcome the vulnerability, tough and self-healing elastomers are needed. However, it was very difficult to design tough and self-healing materials for somatosensitive soft robots due to the trade-off relationship between self-healing efficiency and mechanical toughness.<br/>Here, we report a new molecular design of a self-healing elastomer with high mechanical toughness, and its application for a tough self-healing somatosensitive soft robot system. The designed polymer chain has two kinds of hydrogen bonding from isophorone diisocyanate (IP) and 2-ureido-4-pyrimidone (UPy) for self-healability and toughness respectively. Along with the autonomous self-healing at room temperature, the designed polymer shows unprecedented high toughness and high fracture toughness, which protects the soft robots from damage by sharp objects. The self-healing somatosensory system is composed of various stretchable self-healing sensors including temperature, pressure, damage and strain sensors. These somatosensory systems not only allow us to know the unknown environment but also recognize unexpected damage and respond immediately. The first demonstration of the tough self-healing somatosensitive soft robot would allow the autonomous soft robot system to be used in much more dynamic environments for a long time.