Inside Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory, a 1,074-square foot facility in the basement of Randolph Hall, Dennis Hong is pioneering new technology in robotics inspired by some of the tiniest creatures on the planet — the one-celled amoeba.
Hong, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and the dedicated founder of RoMeLa, has been awarded a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program grant to continue researching this technology, called Whole Skin Locomotion.
The award, which provides $400,000 over a five-year period, is the most prestigious award given by the National Science Foundation to junior faculty with the potential to become leaders in their field.
If Hong’s preliminary experiments are any indication, the WSL mechanism will be groundbreaking technology. The long, cylindrical robot can easily climb up walls and ceilings, move on any type of terrain and even squeeze itself through tiny holes. This type of locomotion can be used in any number of fields, but especially in search-and-rescue and medicine.
“The WSL mechanism is ideal for search-and-rescue because it can squeeze between obstacles, like a collapsed ceiling for example,” Hong said.
His Whole Skin Locomotion mechanism is the result of two years of research.
“I am interested in novel locomotion — new ways of moving. In particular, I am interested in biologically inspired motion,” Hong said.
His robot mimics the motion of single-celled organisms like the amoeba, meaning it can shape-shift to adjust to its environment.
“Amoebas morph into different shapes to move. Essentially, they invert, or turn themselves inside out continuously,” Hong said. “The entire surface of the organism is used for traction, hence the name ‘Whole Skin Locomotion’.”
Hong likened the motion of the versatile new robot to the ‘water worm’ toy popular in the early 1990s.
“The idea we are working on is not new; the water worm exhibits the same principle,” Hong said. “We are just now learning how we can make (the robot) move, how to can actuate it. Because this is new technology, we do not want to use conventional mechanical parts like electric motors. We are coming up with new ways to power this robot.”
This includes the use of Electro Active Polymers to simulate muscles and the search for the right material to use for the robot’s “skin.”
Faculty members throughout the College of Engineering are taking note of Hong’s research accomplishments.
“(Hong’s research) has provided a lot of good application and good contacts for graduate students as well as undergraduates,” said Robert West, associate professor of mechanical engineering. “It has also brought a lot of interaction with sources of funding and government agencies.”
The grant money earned by research like Hong’s is crucial to the success of the engineering program.
“The NSF grant is very prestigious, and provides a good, stable funding source for creative work,” West said.
Hong’s current prototypes are about 25 centimeters in length, but he can imagine that bigger and smaller sizes of the robot might serve different purposes.
“In the future, many different sizes will be created,” Hong said. “A one meter size would work well for search and rescue, but diminutive versions could be used in medicine.”
Hong hypothesizes that tiny robots with WSL could replace endoscopes, with the robot guiding probes or cameras into a person’s body. These microrobots could also travel into human veins to perform minimally invasive surgery. But this technology, which seems to border on science fiction, will not be cropping up in hospitals around the country anytime soon.
“The commercial applications of WSL are still way, way in the future. Today we are simply laying the foundation so that this technology can be further developed,” Hong said. “It has to start somewhere.”
