Each square is one cm in length. In 9 seconds the drive system was able to travel roughly 35mm. This equates to an average speed of approximately 3.9mm/s. The contractile rings were teleoperated and activated by pressing a pushbutton. The device runs on short bursts (6.3 ms) of 20 volts and draws 1200 mA of current. Power consumption was estimated during testing by counting the number of video frames the contractile rings were activated (determined by the red LED on the mosfet). Throughout the test the contractile rings were activated 22 times for a total of 1.39 seconds throughout the test. From this we estimate the device consumed an average of 3.7 Watts over the course of the test.
Conclusion
Our prototype met both our goal and objective. It successfully provided a proof-of-concept prototype for a WSL driving mechanism using SMA contractile rings to invert an elongated FFT through posterior contractions. The device moved forward reliably.
We would like to start exploring the practicality of an untethered WSL prototype. In preparation for this task, future work will focus on expanding the contractile rings on the front-end of the torus, as well as reducing the overall power consumption of the system.