{"id":89411,"date":"2019-04-10T12:42:52","date_gmt":"2019-04-10T19:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/inflatable-space-robots-with-integrated-dielectric-elastomer-transducers-dets"},"modified":"2019-04-10T12:42:52","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T19:42:52","slug":"inflatable-space-robots-with-integrated-dielectric-elastomer-transducers-dets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/inflatable-space-robots-with-integrated-dielectric-elastomer-transducers-dets","title":{"rendered":"Inflatable space robots with integrated dielectric elastomer transducers (DETs)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/inflatable-space-robots-with-integrated-dielectric-elastomer-transducers-dets2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute and Technische Universit\\xE4t Dresden have recently designed a new type of inflatable robot for space navigation. These robots, presented in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spiedigitallibrary.org\/conference-proceedings-of-spie\/10966\/109661L\/Inflatable-dielectric-elastomer-robots-for-space\/10.1117\/12.2514227.short?SSO=1\">a paper published in SPIE Digital Library<\/a>, were created using dielectric elastomer transducers (DETs), which are essentially electrical capacitors made from soft rubbery materials.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCurrent <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/space\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">space<\/a> technology is limited by its mass and volume. It takes thousands of dollars to launch even a single kilogram into orbit,\u201d Joseph Ashby, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. \u201cOur research aims to replace or augment current technology with lighter smart-material replacements combined with inflatable structures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If they are integrated with inflatable structures, DETs could aid the development of soft and low-mass robots, which have high packaging efficiency and are easy to deploy. In fact, DETs deform when a voltage is applied to them, due to the Maxwell stress generated by the electric field.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2019-04-inflatable-space-robots-dielectric-elastomer.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;\">Read more<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute and Technische Universit\\xE4t Dresden have recently designed a new type of inflatable robot for space navigation. These robots, presented in a paper published in SPIE Digital Library, were created using dielectric elastomer transducers (DETs), which are essentially electrical capacitors made from soft rubbery materials. \u201cCurrent space technology is limited [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-robotics-ai","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}