The StickBot Is Exactly What It Sounds Like: A Robot Made Out of Sticks
UPenn’s Devin Carroll developed a low-cost robot that can be customized for varying tasks.
Devin Carroll, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, developed StickBot, a modular robot made of sticks along with four AA batteries, actuators, circuitry, a microcontroller, and a motor driver. StickBot is controlled through a smartphone app that enables the sticks to either crawl (crawler mode) or grasp objects (grasper mode). More amazingly, the bot is very affordable, costing under $100 to create!
“StickBot is a robotic system that is intended to provide users with a large amount of flexibility at an extremely low cost, and we do that by leveraging the modularity of found materials,” Carroll explains. “We have a bunch of tree branches or sticks, and we’re able to assemble them into truss structures in different configurations. In doing so, we can get things like a crawler robot or a gripper robot or, really, anything you can imagine. Behind StickBot is the ability to reconfigure things and to make it extremely affordable.”
A simple model could cost under $100, while larger ones may be a bit more expensive. He also says that components can be taken out and replaced so the robot can perform varying tasks. This applies to materials as well. In that case, Carroll is looking into using hot glue and duct tape in place of string.
In addition, he made a tram runway in the tree canopy, three scaffolding-heights high. With a solar-powered battery integration, StickBot can maneuver in regions to help ecologists figure out a forest’s regrowth speed after clearcut. It can also be used as a prosthetic, social, assistive, or therapy robot in the healthcare industry. “If we could deploy the robotic system like StickBot in a scenario such as that, suddenly we can make an impact in the lives of many more people,” says Carroll. The bots’ components can be easily repaired and replaced, making them an ideal solution for that setting.
“By providing people with the ability to use materials around them, we do two things,” Carroll adds. “One, we cut the cost of materials, which are marked up. Two, we can reduce the complexity without reducing the operational function.”
Health clinics could also invest in modular robots over time as their functionality progresses. “Maybe today you can afford just one module, and then tomorrow you can afford the second, and now, you have a system you can use in multiple ways,” says Michelle J. Johnson, associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. “You can build as you go.”
“Having the flexibility to do more things means that you can help more people,” Carroll says. “And if you can make it inexpensive, that’s even better.”
Carroll isn’t a stranger when it comes to building robots made of natural resources. A few years ago, he developed IceBot, a robot constructed out of, you guessed it, ice. These could be used in areas like Antarctica, where humans can’t work on devices. This is another low-cost system suitable for operating in harsh environments. Carroll received a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records in 2020 for his IceBot invention.