While traditional soft actuators have demonstrated muscle-like characteristics (high energy density, robustness, etc), many of these cannot operate at high frequencies (>100 Hz). We developed novel dielectric elastomer actuators (DEA) that can drive a flapping wing robot at 300 Hz. We further demonstrated open-loop takeoff, passively stable ascending flight, and closed-loop hovering flights in these robots. Not only are they resilient against collisions with nearby obstacles, they can also sense these impact events. This work shows soft robots can be agile, robust, and controllable, which are important for developing next generation of soft robots for diverse applications such as environmental exploration and manipulation.
Here is a nice video showing robot controlled flights and collision robustness: