How Do PCBs Enable Advancements in Soft Robotics?
PCBs Enable Advancements in Soft Robotics
When it comes to building electronic circuits, the modern PCB is the go-to technology. It’s used to house complex ICs, small passive components, and advanced chips with high pin counts. These are then connected together using soldered wires. Standard PCBs can have thousands of connections, powering everything from a heart rate monitor to a Saturn rocket booster.
The first step in making a pcb board is to create the layout on a Computer-Aided Design or CAD system, like KiCad. The layout will be saved as a Gerber file, which defines the copper foil, solder mask, and silk screen layers that will make up the actual PCB.
Next, the designer will place the component footprints on the layout. This will be done with a pick-and-place machine that is programmed to read the file’s location data and locate the appropriate spot on the PCB for each component. The machine will then use its camera to detect the component’s reference points and determine the coordinates of the solder pads. A copper-based layer is then applied, followed by the solder mask, and finally the silkscreen to mark out all of the elements on the PCB.
How Do PCBs Enable Advancements in Soft Robotics?
The component’s pin connections are mapped out and converted to nets in the CAD system, which will also guide the placement of these on the board. The CAD tool will then route these nets, keeping in mind the design rules that prevent the traces of one net from touching each other and governing many other widths and spaces needed for a complete layout.
Aside from the copper-based layer, a PCB’s other essential features are its power and ground planes. The power and ground planes act as a conductor for the signals that are routed with the copper-based traces. If these aren’t properly designed, it can result in cross-talk and other noise that degrades the performance of the built board.
While the advancements in soft robotics may not have as broad of an impact as the invention of the telegraph, it is likely that the development of a flexible pcb will open up new avenues for the research of untethered robots. This is because elastomers can be actuated using strain energy that is stored in their structural properties, such as their ability to stretch until they buckle.
This can allow researchers to develop a wide range of applications for these untethered robots, such as sensor manipulation and control, gripping, crawling, clinging, and even locomotion. However, the integration of rigid sensing and control components with a soft structural body remains a challenge, since this limits their movement precision and stiffness compliance. In order to overcome these limitations, a variety of mechanisms have been proposed for controlling a soft robot’s motion and stiffness, including model-based and non-model-based control approaches. However, a crucial prerequisite to this is the development of flexible sensors that can survive and withstand soft robot structural deformations. This is a critical area of ongoing research in soft robotics.
