TY - JOUR
T1 - Locomotion of inchworm-inspired robot made of smart soft composite (SSC)
AU - Wang, Wei
AU - Lee, Jang Yeob
AU - Rodrigue, Hugo
AU - Song, Sung Hyuk
AU - Chu, Won Shik
AU - Ahn, Sung Hoon
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2014/12/1
Y1 - 2014/12/1
N2 - A soft-bodied robot made of smart soft composite with inchworm-inspired locomotion capable of both two-way linear and turning movement has been proposed, developed, and tested. The robot was divided into three functional parts based on the different functions of the inchworm: the body, the back foot, and the front foot. Shape memory alloy wires were embedded longitudinally in a soft polymer to imitate the longitudinal muscle fibers that control the abdominal contractions of the inchworm during locomotion. Each foot of the robot has three segments with different friction coefficients to implement the anchor and sliding movement. Then, utilizing actuation patterns between the body and feet based on the looping gait, the robot achieves a biomimetic inchworm gait. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the robot's locomotive performance for both linear locomotion and turning movement. Results show that the proposed robot's stride length was nearly one third of its body length, with a maximum linear speed of 3.6 mm s-1, a linear locomotion ef ficiency of 96.4%, a maximum turning capability of 4.3 degrees per stride, and a turning locomotion efficiency of 39.7%.
AB - A soft-bodied robot made of smart soft composite with inchworm-inspired locomotion capable of both two-way linear and turning movement has been proposed, developed, and tested. The robot was divided into three functional parts based on the different functions of the inchworm: the body, the back foot, and the front foot. Shape memory alloy wires were embedded longitudinally in a soft polymer to imitate the longitudinal muscle fibers that control the abdominal contractions of the inchworm during locomotion. Each foot of the robot has three segments with different friction coefficients to implement the anchor and sliding movement. Then, utilizing actuation patterns between the body and feet based on the looping gait, the robot achieves a biomimetic inchworm gait. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the robot's locomotive performance for both linear locomotion and turning movement. Results show that the proposed robot's stride length was nearly one third of its body length, with a maximum linear speed of 3.6 mm s-1, a linear locomotion ef ficiency of 96.4%, a maximum turning capability of 4.3 degrees per stride, and a turning locomotion efficiency of 39.7%.
KW - Inchworm-inspired robot
KW - Shape memory alloy
KW - Smart soft composite
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84913555484&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1088/1748-3182/9/4/046006
DO - 10.1088/1748-3182/9/4/046006
M3 - Article
C2 - 25289658
AN - SCOPUS:84913555484
SN - 1748-3182
VL - 9
JO - Bioinspiration and Biomimetics
JF - Bioinspiration and Biomimetics
IS - 4
M1 - 046006
ER -