Hard Shell, Soft Core: Binary Actuators for Deep-Sea Applications

Abstract

Deep-sea research represents invaluable opportunities to unravel hidden ecosystems, uncover unknown biodiversity, and provide critical insights into the Earth’s history and the impacts of climate change. Due to the extreme conditions, exploring the deep-sea traditionally requires costly equipment, such as specific diving robots, engineered to withstand the high pressure. Our research aims to reduce the costs of deep-sea sediment sampling by introducing a novel actuation system for suction samplers, that capitalises the advantages of soft material actuators. At first glance, soft material actuators may not appear suitable for the harsh conditions that prevail in the deep-sea, but when combined with a rigid, bistable mechanism there is great potential for improving the accessibility of sampling and research in this challenging environment. The binary actuation system that results from this combination, is modular, scalable, lightweight, and low cost in comparison to existing solutions.