The device: As a proof-of-concept model, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have mounted a camera in a system that acts like real muscles, allowing the camera to mimic the delicate movements of the eye. While traditional systems of robotic movement (called actuators), like motors or pneumatics, are rigid, graduate student Joshua Schultz and supervisor Jun Ueda used piezoelectric materials—elastic ceramics—to create a system that is more flexible, and thus more human-like, a goal of robot builders looking to improve human-robot interactions.
Piezoelectric materials expand or contract when electrical impulses are applied, but the displacement is usually uselessly small. But by combining many small stacks of materials into a larger array, with each system nested inside another, Schultz and Ueda built a device that is small and flexible. Different stacks of piezoelectric units are activated individually, allowing the researchers to selectively trigger more or fewer units to direct movement, ...
