Leveraging Bioinspired Structural Constraints for Tunable and Programmable Snapping Dynamics in High‐Speed Soft Actuators

Abstract

AbstractCreating high‐speed soft actuators will have broad engineering and technological applications. Snapping provides a power‐amplified mechanism to achieve rapid movements in soft actuators that typically show slow movements. However, precise control of snapping dynamics (e.g., speed and direction of launching or jumping) remains a daunting challenge. Here, a bioinspired design principle is presented that harnesses a reconfigurable constraint structure integrated into a photoactive liquid crystal elastomer actuator to enable tunable and programmable control over its snapping dynamics. By reconfiguring constrained fin‐array‐shaped structure, the snapping dynamics of the structured actuator, such as launching or jumping angle and height, motion speed, and release force can be on‐demand tuned, thus enabling controllable catapult motion and programmable jumping. Moreover, the structured actuators exhibit a unique combination of ultrafast moving speed (up to 2.5 m s−1 in launching and 0.22 m s−1 in jumping), powerful ejection (long ejection distance of ≈20 cm, 35 mg ball), and high jumping height (≈8 cm, 40 times body lengths), which few other soft actuators can achieve. This study provides a new universal design paradigm for realizing controllable rapid movements and high‐power motions in soft matter, which are useful for building high‐performance soft robotics and actuation devices.