3D printed robot wins first round of Super Mario Bros.

a robot made in 3D printer managed to win the first phase of the game “Super Mario Bros.”, from Nintendo. Okay, the first phase of the game is one of the simplest levels in history, and you are practically born knowing how to overcome it, but follow the story.

The project is part of the subdivision of “soft robotics” from the University of Maryland, USA, known for fleeing traditional constructions and abandoning rigid materials to build their robots with flexible components, which mimic physical attributions found in animal tissue.

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Such is the case with the current project: consisting of a three-fingered hand, the project has enough dexterity to manipulate the buttons and directional control of a joystick. NES. The same team of scientists built two turtle-shaped robots – the animal that serves as the university’s mascot – and published their findings in a paper released by Science Advances.

According to the university, there are numerous advantages in using flexible materials: imagine a robot whose entire body is malleable to the point of digging into smaller openings, looking for victims of disasters such as landslides or earthquakes. Not to mention the possibilities of their use as prostheses for lost limbs or biomedical applications.

“Recently, several groups have tried to master fluid circuitry to improve the autonomy of soft tissue robots,” said Ruben Acevedo, a Maryland graduate student and co-author of the paper. “But the methods of building and integrating these circuits into robots can take days to weeks, with a high volume of manual work and technical capacity.”

In 2016, scientists at Harvard University felt this in their skin, when developing an octopus robot and replacing rigid plates for “microfluidic circuits”. These components acted to regulate the flow of water (hydraulic) or air (pneumatic) instead of electricity, allowing the robot to move and squirm.

But this also entails difficulties: microfluidic circuits necessarily require sterilized rooms; their production time is longer and more expensive, and their integration into the robotic system is more complex.

Acevedo and his team found a way around this through the technology known as “Polyjet 3D Printing”, endowed with microscopic-level layer resolution and precision of up to 0.014 millimeters (mm) and capable of producing thin walls and complex geometries using the widest range of materials available.

In other words: the printer adds one liquid layer, lets it dry, adds another, lets it dry too, and so on.

“Incorporating materials that differ in stiffness serves to improve performance by allowing specific material properties to complement the functionality we desire,” said Ryan D. Sochol, co-author of the paper. Items such as the uterine diaphragm (for contraceptive methods) or elastomer rings (used in some types of joints and piping), for example, need to deform into various shapes in order to accommodate changes in the body where they are positioned, without losing efficiency.

In the case of the 3D-printed robot that embarrassed Super Mario, the scientists created it with just a specific pressure point, which responded with different commands according to the force exerted: a light touch made the character move on the screen . A medium pressure caused a jump and, finally, a stronger press corresponded to the letter buttons (B, A if the famous “nintendinho” is not of its time).

Unlike other surveys of this type, Acevedo and Sochol decided to socialize the designs of the robot that defeated Super Mario: “we share all our design for free, so that anyone can download the files, modify on demand and print in 3D – whether with their own own machines or with a third-party service like we did – all the soft elements and fluidic circuits of our work”. According to Sochol, the cost for this type of production would be approximately US$100 (R$519.86) with the software they used via GitHub.

“Our wish is that this open source strategy 3D printing tools extend the accessibility, dissemination, reproducibility and adoption of soft robotics with integrated fluidic circuits and, over time, accelerate the advancement of this field,” said Sochol.

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