Dr. David, the director of the Bioinspired and Medical Robotics Laboratory, engineered the “Minimally actuated Reconfigurable Continuous Track Robot” for search and rescue situations in complicated terrain. It can purposed for other applications such excavation, agriculture and crawling inside pipes for industrial maintenance. One Dr. David’s robot is also the SAW (single actuator wave) robot which was initlally inspired by miniature biological organism which swim by undulating their tails. Creating this robot was very challenging. Although the equations showed that a single motor is needed to develop the wave motion, realizing this motion mechanically was not simple. I found the solution when I was teaching the course Mechanical design and realized that the side projection of a spring is a sine function that advances when the spring is rotated The main purpose of the SAW robot is to crawl inside the body. Our latest design is less than 1.5 cm wide and it is capable of crawling inside the intestine of the pig (ex-vivo). Currently, we are seeking funding to develop smaller robots to crawl inside the digestive system. We believe this is very possible.

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