From August 16 to 21, 2023, Festo, a global leader in automation technology and technology education, made its appearance at the World Robotics Conference (booth number A119). This is Festo's fifth participation in the World Robotics Conference, and every year the Festo booth brings exciting bionic shows. This year, the new members of the Festo bionic flight family, the BionicSwift and the "old friend" ebutterflies, joined the show. Visitors came to the scene to reveal the secret of group flight of ultra-light flying robots. In addition, Festo also brought interesting industrial automation applications to showcase Rubik's Cube 2.0 and adaptive grippers from bionic concepts to real products. At Festo, nature and technology are an inseparable whole. Since the early 1990s, Festo has invested a lot of energy in the field of bionics. Looking back at the history of bionics research over the past 20 years, it is an era of studying nature, an era of rich experience, and an era of rapid development of automation technology. Festo has collaborated with multiple renowned universities, research institutes, and research and development companies to create an unparalleled variety of projects. Ant robots with teamwork spirit, robot arms like octopuses, grasping tentacles with suction cups, butterflies dancing in groups, flexible chameleon like grasping hands, bats with biomimetic wings, pneumatic robotic arms with sharp touch, artificial intelligence biomimetic workstations, and more. The Festo biomimetic team has completed multiple biomimetic projects in the fields of grasping, air and water motion, and pneumatic robot technology. Mastering the complexity of technology, exploring future business areas, and shaping the future of automation in a responsible manner. Bionics has created new solution spaces for future automation, revealing how organisms can meet constantly changing conditions and how intelligent evolution strategies can be transformed into efficient automation - survival of the fittest.
The BionicSwift, who debuted at the WRC for the first time, is a new member of the Festo bionic family. It imitates the flight mode of swallows in nature, dancing gracefully and freely in the air. It is flexible and lightweight, capable of circling, making sharp turns, and flying in groups.
The design focus of the BionicSwift is on the use of lightweight structures. It has a body length of 44.5 centimeters, a wingspan of 68 centimeters, and a weight of only 42 grams, making it a highly integrated lightweight model. The wings are based on the feathers of birds, and each feather is made of ultra-light, elastic, but very strong foam material, like roof tiles. The feathers are stacked one by one, just like real birds. Thanks to this natural replica of wings, the bionic Swift has a better flight curve compared to previous flapping wing aircraft.
The BionicSwift has a very compact structure inside, accommodating flapping mechanisms, flapping control components, communication technology, elevators, and tail wings. In a very small space, a brushless motor, two servo motors, batteries, gearbox, and several circuit boards are installed. At the same time, through ultra wideband technology (UWB) indoor wireless guidance system, the main control computer, radio module, and aircraft interact, and the bionic Swift can achieve coordinated and autonomous group flight within a defined airspace. The intelligent networking of aircraft and GPS navigation can form a 3D navigation system that can be used in future interconnected factories, becoming an innovative driving force for internal logistics. For example, autonomous control flying robots can be used for material transportation, precise positioning of materials and material flows, and optimizing space usage within factories through flight corridors.
Inspired by the transformation of imitation fruit technology, Festo placed great emphasis on energy and material conservation in the early stages of product and technical solution development, and applied knowledge of energy efficiency and lightweight structure to Festo or customers' products, providing more efficient products and solutions for partners.
Grasping as a skill has always played an important role in biomimetic learning networks. Nature often provides amazing creativity and new solutions for industrial applications. Multiple biomimetic crawling applications have been developed in the Festo interdisciplinary research network, two of which have been further developed into batch products.
The design of adaptive gripper finger DHAS is based on the amazing behavioral characteristics of the fish tail fin. If the side of the fin is pressed, the tail fin will bend towards the pressure point, rather than away from it. The developers achieved the FinRay Effect technically through two flexible polyurethane tapes connected to each other using intermediate bridge plates ®。 The gripper fingers are sturdy and flexible, allowing for easy adaptation to the shape of the workpiece and automatic adjustment during grasping. This allows for a gentle and firm grip on vulnerable objects with irregular surfaces. DHAS has been widely used in the food industry, such as fruit and vegetable classification.
Another Adaptive Gripper DHEF, is inspired by the chameleon tongue. To capture prey, a chameleon can make its tongue pop out like a rubber band. Before the tongue touches the insect, the center of the tongue stretches back while the edge continues to move forward. As a result, the tongue of a chameleon can match the shape and size of various prey, and can be securely wrapped. An important component of the DHEF gripper is a silicone cap designed to mimic the tongue of a chameleon, slightly overfilled, that can be flexibly flipped according to the shape of the object, thereby wrapping and grasping the object. By using proportional valves for corresponding control, it is possible to grasp multiple objects, such as screws, squares, or a pen.
Festo, with its expertise in automation and technology education, is committed to helping customers improve productivity, thereby creating space for sustainable economic, environmental, and social development. Biomimetic thinking points to the direction of shaping the future world of life with a responsible attitude. Technological innovation should always create added value for the human, animal, and plant worlds. Nature is the foundation and goal of bionics. We use biomimetic research to overcome the increasing technological complexity and provide inspiration and problem-solving ideas for future factory process digitization, IoT, and Industry 4.0.