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Drawing from the characteristics of centipedes, such as their low center of gravity, high stability in movement, adaptability to complex terrains, and ability to continue moving even after losing a limb, this paper designs a self-reconfigurable centipede-type rescue robot with relatively high stability while moving. The robot’s body can lift and traverse higher obstacles, and its multi-segmented structure enables self-disconnection and reconstruction for docking. Moreover, the proposed robot is adept at navigating diverse terrains and surmounting obstacles, equipped with a camera sensor facilitating life recognition, terrain surveying, scene understanding, and obstacle avoidance. Its capabilities prove advantageous for achieving challenging ground rescue missions. Motion stability tests, conducted across various terrains, showcase the robot’s ability to maintain a consistent movement path in rugged environments. Operating with a leg lift height of 0.02 m, the robot achieves a speed of 0.09 m per second. In simulated damaged conditions, the robot demonstrates the capacity to disconnect and reconnect its limbs swiftly, restoring movement capabilities within a single second. During environmental perception tasks, the robot processes and analyzes environmental data in real time at a rate of approximately 15 frames per second, with an 80% confidence level. With an F1 score exceeding 93% and an average precision rate surpassing 98%, the robot showcases its reliability and efficiency. Full article

Inspired by insects in nature, an increasing number of soft robots have been proposed to mimic their locomotion patterns. As a wireless actuation method, the magnetic actuation technique has been widely applied to drive soft magnetic robots for diverse applications. Although recent works on soft materials have stimulated the development of soft robots, it is challenging to achieve the efficient movement of soft robots for in vivo biomedical application. Inspired by centipede locomotion, a soft octopodal robot is designed in this paper. The robot is fabricated by mixing magnetic particles with silicone polymers, which is then magnetized by a specific magnetic field. The prototypes can be actuated by an external magnetic field (5–8 mT) produced by custom-made electromagnetic coils. Experimental results show that the soft robot can move at a high speed in the range of 0.536–1.604 mm/s on different surfaces, including paper, wood, and PMMA. This indicates that the soft robot can achieve comparable speeds to other robots, while being driven by a lower magnitude, resulting in energy savings. Furthermore, it achieves a high speed of 0.823 mm/s on the surface of a pig colon. The fine capabilities of the soft robot in terms of crossing uneven biological surfaces and carrying external loads are demonstrated. The results indicate that the reported soft robot exhibits promising applications in the biomedical field. Full article