CBE Seminar: “Robots That Eat, Breathe and Bleed”

Abstract

Modern robots lack the multifunctional, interconnected chemical systems found in living organisms and, consequently, exhibit reduced efficiency and autonomy. At the same time, new advancements in chemistry are enabling synthetic materials with capabilities that surpass biological materials. This talk will discuss how advances in electrochemistry and soft materials can transform the way we build and use robots, with the ultimate goal of surpassing the capabilities of living organisms. Specifically, fundamental insights will be applied to improve the performance and capabilities of structural materials and energy storage in robots. The discussion on energy storage will cover materials and manufacturing techniques, funded by DARPA’s SHRIMP program, that triple the energy density of batteries for small scale robots, approaches that break the scaling laws of energy storage technologies by allowing robots to eat metal in their environment, and multifunctional synthetic vascular systems that increase the energy density of robots by up to 4x that of robots that only use lithium ion batteries. The talk will finish with a discussion on how old tools like self-assembly enable metals with the strength of titanium and density of water, and how new approaches to healing, through transport mediated in water, allow bone-inspired room-temperature healing of metals.