Artificial annelid robot driven by soft actuators

Abstract

The annelid provides a biological solution of effective locomotion adaptable to a large variety of unstructured environmental conditions. The undulated locomotion of the segmented body in the annelid is characterized by the combination of individual motion of the muscles distributed along the body, which has been of keen interest in biomimetic investigation. In this paper, we present an annelid-like robot driven by soft actuators based on dielectric elastomer. To mimic the unique motion of the annelid, a novel actuation method employing dielectric elastomer is developed. By using the actuator, a three-degree-of-freedom actuator module is presented, which can provide up-down translational motion, and two rotational degree-of-freedom motion. The proposed actuation method provides advantageous features of reduction in size, fast response and ruggedness in operation. By serially connecting the actuator modules, a micro-robot mimicking the motion of the annelid is developed and its effectiveness is experimentally demonstrated.

Design, fabrication and control of soft robots

“…These soft machines have modular bodies consisting of soft rubber segments, which can be composed serially or in parallel to create complex morphologies. The body of a soft robot may consist of multiple materials with different stiffness properties 22,11 . A soft robot encases in a soft body all the sub-systems of a conventional robot: an actuation system, a perception system, driving electronics, and a computation system, with corresponding power sources.…”

Fundamentals of soft robot locomotion

“…Actuation relied on SMA wires, and anisotropic friction was realized with two bristles at the edges of the body. Finally, a multi-segment purely elongating body (artificial annelid robot) was presented in [15], where electro-active polymer (EAP) membranes pushed the segments of the annelid robot, while stiff feathers resembling setal hairs provided the anisotropic friction. Other simple ways to implement the required friction include the employment of slippery pads at the edges of the body to reduce friction with the ground when the body is tilted over a threshold angle [13], bristles at the distal parts of the body [14] or the usage of controlled adhesion pads [11].…”

Light‐Driven Soft Robot Mimics Caterpillar Locomotion in Natural Scale

“…[10][11][12] Realizing a natural size caterpillar robot faces two challenges. First, the size of available actuators, either based on shape-memory alloys, [13] dielectric elastomers, [14] or pneumatic/ fluidic artificial muscles [3,15] prevents miniaturization. Not only are the smallest robots to date tens of centimeters in size, but they also require external power to be supplied via wires or tubing.…”