Abstract
Twisted and coiled polymer (TCP) actuators are becoming increasingly prevalent in soft robotic fields due to their powerful and hysteresis-free stroke, large specific work density, and ease of fabrication. This paper presents a soft crawling robot with spike-inspired robot feet which can deform and crawl like an inchworm. The robot mainly consists of two leaf springs, connection part, robot feet, and two TCP actuators. A system level model of a soft crawling robot is presented for flexible and effective locomotion. Such a model can offer high-efficiency design and flexible locomotion of the crawling robot. Results show that the soft crawling robot can move at a speed of 0.275 mm/s when TCP is powered at 24 V.
Highlights
Soft robots have lately received great attention from both academia and industry due to their high safety and strong environmental adaptability [1,2]
Classical crawling robots driven by DC motor suffer from bulky and complicated structures, making them unsuitable for interaction with humans and unstructured environments [1], even though they have the advantages of fast respond speed and high accuracy
We presented a novel kind of inchworm-inspired soft crawling robot driven by Twisted and coiled polymer (TCP) muscles with a quick recovery structure
Summary
Soft robots have lately received great attention from both academia and industry due to their high safety and strong environmental adaptability [1,2]. While they are lack of compliance and adaptability due to their rigidity Different from those rigid robots, soft robots that are made of elastic materials partly or entirely (such as silicone or other functional polymers), are capable to change their structures and work effectively in unstructured environments with excellent resilience [3]. Their high compliance and infinite degrees of freedom make them ideal for mimicking the behavior of natural creatures [4,5]. The deformation-force curve of leaf springs is designable and complemented with TCP actuators compared with other recovery structure (such as silicone shell) to form a controllable and effective locomotion unit. Machines 2022, 10, 142 of the robot (such as speed, step and load capacity) can be predicted and improved by these models
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