Development of a deformation-driven rolling robot with a soft outer shell

Abstract

We propose a mobile robot that rolls by active deformation of the soft outer shell. The robot consists of a wire drive module and soft outer shell part that are joined only by prestressed wires. The soft shell and wire drive help realize a tough, low-cost, and lightweight design. To realize high-speed rolling, we examined the effect of property changes on the converged solution and rolling speed. Finally, we conduct a experiment with actual deformable robot.