Minimal Bio-Inspired Crawling Robots with Motion Control Capabilities

TY - JOUR

T1 - Minimal Bio-Inspired Crawling Robots with Motion Control Capabilities

AU - Wu, Jintian

AU - Liu, Mingyi

AU - Padovani, Damiano

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.

PY - 2024/1

Y1 - 2024/1

N2 - Nonskeletal animals such as worms achieve locomotion via crawling. We consider them as an inspiration to design robots that help underline the mechanisms of crawling. In this paper, we aim to identify an approach with the simplest structure and actuators. Our robots consist of cut-and-fold bodies equipped with pneumatically-driven soft actuators. We have developed fabrication techniques for coin-sized robots. Experiments showed that our robots can move up to 4.5 mm/s with straight motion (i.e., 0.1 body lengths per second) and perform cornering and U-turns. We have also studied the friction characteristics of our robots with the ground to develop a multistate model with stick–slip contact conversions. Our theoretical analyses depict comparable results to experiments demonstrating that simple and straightforward techniques can illustrate the crawling mechanism. Considering the minimal robots’ structure, this result is a critical step towards developing miniature crawling robots successfully.

AB - Nonskeletal animals such as worms achieve locomotion via crawling. We consider them as an inspiration to design robots that help underline the mechanisms of crawling. In this paper, we aim to identify an approach with the simplest structure and actuators. Our robots consist of cut-and-fold bodies equipped with pneumatically-driven soft actuators. We have developed fabrication techniques for coin-sized robots. Experiments showed that our robots can move up to 4.5 mm/s with straight motion (i.e., 0.1 body lengths per second) and perform cornering and U-turns. We have also studied the friction characteristics of our robots with the ground to develop a multistate model with stick–slip contact conversions. Our theoretical analyses depict comparable results to experiments demonstrating that simple and straightforward techniques can illustrate the crawling mechanism. Considering the minimal robots’ structure, this result is a critical step towards developing miniature crawling robots successfully.

KW - bio-inspiration

KW - crawling robot

KW - fluid-driven actuation

KW - friction

KW - modeling

KW - robotics

KW - soft actuator

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85183166510&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3390/act13010004

DO - 10.3390/act13010004

M3 - 文章

AN - SCOPUS:85183166510

SN - 2076-0825

VL - 13

JO - Actuators

JF - Actuators

IS - 1

M1 - 4

ER -