In a paper recently published in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, Zarrouk describes his latest innovative robot: SAW, or Single-Actuator Wave robot, “a novel bioinspired robot which can move forward or backward by producing a continuously advancing wave.” Basically, SAW moves around by doing the worm non-stop. Funky.
As far as I can tell, real worms don’t actually get around by doing the worm. The worm (the dance, that is) is a large amplitude continuously advancing sine wave, which is also how SAW moves. Earthworms, on the other hand, move in a more stretchy—grippy—contracty way (a longitudinal wave). The kind of wave locomotion that SAW uses (a transverse wave) is much more common in ocean animals, and at very small scales (like tiny organisms that swim using flagella). The appeal is that it’s a very simple motion, leading to a minimalist design that achieves high performance, although figuring out how to make it work was quite a challenge…
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
