Fully 3D-printed tortoise-like soft mobile robot with muti-scenarios adaptability.

Abstract

Soft robotic systems are well suited to unstructured, dynamic tasks and environments, owing to their ability to adapt and conform without damaging themselves or their surroundings. These abilities are crucial in areas such as human-robot interaction，simplification of control system and weight reduction. However, as the requirements increase, the drawbacks of existing soft mobile robots such as single locomotion mode and application scenarios, manufacturing difficulties and low energy conversion efficiency gradually emerge.
Based on the current shortcomings of soft robots, this paper designs and proposes a fully 3D-printed tortoise-like soft mobile robot with muti-scenarios adaptability. The robot uses a Bionic Tortoise Leg Actuator structure that enables simultaneous bending of the actuator in both directions, simplifying robot control and increasing the maximum bending angle achievable. In addition, a reconfiguration design solution has been proposed to enable the robot to implement two bionic modes for land and sea tortoises, adapting to move on hard and soft surfaces and in water, enabling it to move in amphibious and complex environments. The performance of the pneumatic soft actuators are also improved by an improved Digital Light Processing method that enhances the maximum strain of the 3D printed soft material.
The prototype was tested to give maximum movement speeds for different gaits and environments, demonstrating that the fully 3D printed turtle-like soft-mobile robot designed in this paper is highly adaptable to multiple scenarios. The robot studied in this paper has a wide range of applications, with potential applications including navigation in a variety of domain environments, inspection of large underground oil and gas pipelines, and navigation in high temperature, high humidity and strong magnetic field environments or in military alert conditions.&#xD.