Tiny robot harvests battery power via skin on its feet

What happened

In a study published in National Science Review , the team demonstrated a soft, paper-thin membrane attached to a robot's footpad that generates electricity on the fly as it treads across active surfaces like aluminum, zinc, or silicon. Researchers have developed a paper-thin foot membrane that lets crawling microrobots harvest electricity directly from the ground beneath them, ditching heavy onboard batteries by turning metal and silicon surfaces into an active power source.

Science China Press 2 / 2 The technology could power micro-robots such as this one Pavel Danilyuk - Pexels Researchers have developed a paper-thin foot membrane that lets crawling microrobots harvest electricity directly from the ground beneath them, ditching heavy onboard batteries by turning metal and silicon surfaces into an active power source. Conventional commercial batteries are simply too bulky, with a 1.7-gram robot burning out after roughly two minutes unless a battery accounts for an impractical 94% of its total weight.

Researchers at Fudan University in China have bypassed onboard storage entirely by turning the ground beneath the machine into a power supply. The system effectively turns every step into an instantaneous electrochemical generator.